
Class i ' ' i^6 L 

Book_^_^l- 



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\\Jo[)d(^r\3Y)d: 



TA, 



OR, 



i\L/\8i^/\ /\ND ]}\i Inland Passage 



LIEUT. FREDERICK SCHWATKA. 



WITH 



ol description of i\)e Oountry v|)navensed by tr)e 
ibortQern I acific I \ailpoad, 



JOHN HYDE, 



Author of "The Wonderland Route to the Pacific Coast," "Alice's Adventures in the 
New Wonderland," etc., etc. 



Copyrighted, 1886, by CHAS. S. FEE, General Passenger Agent 
Northern Pacific Railroad, St. Paul. 



^ aiiaxidet G (J li©i; 3 




PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS, CHICAGO 



^ 



y 







NTR0DUeT0RY, 



tfW ^W^-ULTI discurrent, et augebitur sttdtitia" Thus did one of the profoundest of 
1 / modern thinkers parody the prediction of the Hebrew prophet who foretold the 
ime when, with increased facihties for travel and intercommunication, there should 
come a great enlargement of the bounds of knowledge, and a corresponding amel- 
-'■^^^'S^ ioration of the condition of humanity. 

It would, however, be strange indeed, if the complex process of social evolution, even in its 
present stage, were not marked by some of the indications of a retrograde movement. The age 
in which we live has undoubtedly its peculiar follies and foibles, which are but thrown into relief 
by the qualities that more generally distinguish it. 

But many are running to and fro, and knowledge is being increased. Nature is revealing 
herself to the traveler in new forms and aspects, and disclosing to his wondering gaze mysterious 
pages of her great book hitherto hidden from him. 

And while extensive tracts of country, presenting physical features to which the entire known 
world furnishes no parallel, have been brought by railroad enterprise within reach alike of the 
curious sight-seer and the inquiring student, a vast region, of almost unexampled wealth- 
producing capabilities, has, by the same agency, been thrown open to that advancing tide of 
civilization which is rapidly overspreading the world. 

Hence the traveler journeying to Wonderland — to that enchanted realm where the most 
extravagant creations of the fancy appear trivial and commonplace beside the more extraordinary 
works of Nature — sees also, in process of solution, some of the hitherto most perplexing problems 
of economics ; observes, as he can not do with like facility anywhere else in the world, the well- 
ordered plan upon which the bounty of Nature is distributed ; and witnesses the unlocking of vast 
storehouses of good, to supply the increasing needs of the human race. 

It may be doubted whether the world affords another tour at once so delightful and so in- 
structive as that which, beginning at the head of the Mississippi valley, and crossing the great 
wheat fields of Dakota and Eastern Washington, the stock ranges of Montana, and the gold and 
silver ribbed mountains of Montana and Idaho, embraces also the wonders of the Yellowstone 
National Park, and the incomparable scenery of the Columbia river, to crown all with the 
stupendous sights of that Great Land whose unique natural features have earned for it the well- 
deserved title of "Wonderland." No longer one of peril and hardship, but, on the contrary, 
one of absolute luxury, this tour has, within the last two years, attracted thousands of pilgrims 
from all parts of the civilized world. To them, as well as to all other lovers of the sublime and 
beautiful, and to the students of the mysteries of Nature in all lands, who may have the good 
fortune to visit the far Northwest in 1886, the following pages are respectfully inscribed. 




60NTENTS. 



Page 

The Advantages of Travel — Introductory ........ 3 

The Development of the Northwest — St. Paul and Minneapolis .... 7, 8 

Minnesota Lakes and their Attractions for the Angler ...... 8-io 

Brainerd, Duluth, Superior and Ashland ........ lO 

Red River Valley .....■.-•...• I2 

The Changes of a Half Century ......... 13 

Great Wheat Farms of Dakota, and the Capital of the Territory . . . . . 14 

" Bad Lands" of the Little Missouri ......... 15. iC> 

Yellowstone River .........■.•• 16-ig 

Yellowstone National Park ........... 20-22 

Helena and the Romance of Mining ......... 23-26 

Main Range of the Rocky Mountains ..... ... 26, 27 

Butte City, the greatest Mining Camp in the World ....... 27-30 

The Flathead Country 30, 31 

Clark's Fork and Lake Pend d'Oreille 31-34 

Spokane Falls ......■...••. 35 

Palouse and Walla Walla Wheat Countries 36, 37 

The Columbia River .......•••. 37-40 

Portland 40. 4 1 

The Willamette Valley and Southern Oregon . . . . ■ • 42, 43 

The Lower Columbia and City of Astoria, with Fisheries 43-4^ 

Western Washington : its Scenery and Resources ....... 46 

The Sovereign Mountain: Tacoma .......... 47 

Puget Sound .......'...•■• 48-54 

Victoria, British Columbia . . . . . . . . ■ ■ 55. 5^ 

Discovery Passage .........••• 5° 

Queen Charlotte Sound .......••••. 60 

Varieties of Fish found in Inland Passage ........ 62 

Wrangell, Alaska ... ^3.64 

Indian Life, Facilities for Studying ......... 67-71 

Sitka, Alaska 73-77 

Hot Springs Bay, Alaska ........... 77 

Climate of Sitka 79 

Glaciers of Alaska ......-.••• 93-95 

Land of the Chilkats 81-84 

Juneau, Alaska, and the Mines of Douglas Island ....... 84-86 

Glacier Bay 86-92 

Mount St. Elias 95, 9^ 



(5) 




..^^ 



< 



Index t0 iLLUSTRATieNS. 



Alaska's Thousand Islands, as seen from Sitka 

An Alaska Indian House, with Totem Poles 

Chancel of the Greek Church, Sitka . . . 

Chilkat Blanket .... 

Columbia River, looking Eastward from Rock Bluff 
Detroit Lake and Hotel Minnesota, Detroit, Minn. 
Falls of the Gibbon River, National Park ... 
Floating Fish Wheel, Columbia River .... 

Hotel Tacoma, Tacoma, W. T. 

Lake Pend d'Oreille, Idaho ...... 

Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, National Park 

Mount Hood, from the Head of the Dalles, Columbia River 

Mount Tacoma, W. T. ..... . 

Old Faithful Geyser, National Park 

Scenes among the Alaskan Glaciers .... 

Scenes in the Inland Passage ..... 

Sitka, Alaska ........ 

T'linket Basket Work 

T'linket Carved Spoons ... 

T'linket War Canoe ....... 

Yellowstone River, National Park . . . . 



66 



Frontispiece 
II 
29 
42 
47 
33 



44 
18 
89 

59 
72 
63 

85 
83 
25 




(6) 




From the Great Lakes to Puget Soukd. 



'To the doorways of the West-Wind, 
To the portals of the Sunset." 




^HILE, in the old world, armies have been contending 
for the possession of narrow strips of territory, 
in kingdoms themselves smaller than many single 
American States, and venerable savants have been 
predicting the near approach of the time when the 
population of the world shall have outstripped the 
means of subsistence, there has arisen, between the 
headwaters of the Mississippi and the mouth of the 
stately Columbia, an imperial domain, more than three 
times the size of the German empire, and capable of sus- 
taining upon its own soil one hundred millions of people. 
What little has been done — for it is but little, comparatively — 
toward the development of its amazing resources, has called into 
existence, on its eastern border, two great and beautiful cities, which have 
sprung up side by side on the banks of the great Father of Waters. 

It is there, at St. Paul and Minneapolis, that the traveler's journey to Won- 
derland may be said to begin. And what could be more fitting ? for are they 
not wonders in themselves, presenting, as they do, the most astonishing picture 
of rapid expansion the world has ever seen ? 

But it is not their magnitude that excites the greatest surprise. If there is 
a single newspaper reader in ignorance of the fact that the State census of 
1885 found them with a population of 240,597 ? or that the 23,994 buildings 
erected within their limits since the beginning of 1882, represent a frontage of 
over 100 miles and an expenditure of $69,895,390, or that their banking capital 



8 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

considerably exceeds that of either San Francisco, New Orleans, Cincinnati 
or St. Louis, it is through no fault of the cities themselves. But the visitor 
may bring with him a just appreciation of their size and commercial importance, 
and yet have had no conception of their beauty, nor of the abounding evidences 
of public spirit and private enterprise that will confront him at every turn. 

The position of St. Paul, at the head of navigation, and as the focus of the 
railway activity of the Northwest, commands for it an extensive wholesale trade, 
its sales aggregating, in 1885, the large sum of $81,420,000. The surprise with 
which the visitor views the stately piles that are the outward and visible signs 
of the vast commercial and financial interests of the city, the creation of a few 
brief seasons, is no greater than the astonishment with which he realizes the 
absence of all appearance of immaturity. In no city in the Union are the busi- 
ness quarters more solid and substantial ; in none is the domestic architecture 
more attractive. Nothing is crude, nothing tentative, nothing transitional. 

Clustered around the great Falls of St. Anthony, stand those colossal flour- 
ing mills that have been more than ever the pride and glory of Minneapolis, 
since they enabled her to pluck from Chicago's crown one of the brightest of 
its jewels. It is a startling commentary upon the much vaunted supremacy of 
the great metropolis of the West, that, while the wheat attracted to its market 
fell gradually from 34,106,109 bushels in 1879, to 13,265,223 bushels in 1885, 
the amount handled by the millers of Minneapolis increased, within the same 
period, from 7,514,364 bushels to 32,112,840 bushels. The mills have a total 
flour-manufacturing capacity of 33,973 barrels per day, an amount equal to the 
necessities of the three most populous States of the Union, or of one-half the 
population of Great Britain. 

But to turn from the romance of figures to that of song and story. 
Should the traveler have any desire to visit the far-famed falls of Minnehaha, 
it is now he should gratify it. Situated almost midway between the two cities, 
they can be easily reached, either by train, carriage or river steamboat. The 
poetic interest with which they have been invested by their association with 
the legend of Hiawatha constitutes but the least of their claims upon the 
traveler's notice ; and, should he turn aside to visit them, not even the sub- 
lime scenery of Wonderland will entirely efface the memory of their laughing 
waters. 

The residents of St. Paul and Minneapolis are fortunate in having, within 
easy access, two of the most beautiful of Minnesota's ten thousand lakes. 
White Bear and Minnetonka. Justly celebrated for the beauty of their scenery 
and the excellence of their hotel and other accommodations, they are resorted 
to annually by thousands of visitors from far and near. Minnetonka is not 
inappropriately called the Saratoga of the Northwest ; but no designation, how- 
ever high-sounding or significant, can do justice to the exquisite beauty of its 
scenery or the sumptuousness of its hotels. 

It is time, however, that we were directing our steps toward that scarcely 
less luxurious hotel which is waiting to convey us to the fir-clad slopes of 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 9 

Puget Sound ! While holding in honorable remembrance the names of Watt 
and Stephenson, surely posterity ought not altogether to forget those of the 
inventors of the sleeping car and dining car ; for the railway train of early 
days was hardly a greater advance upon the old stage-coach than is the com- 
pletely equipped train of to-day over its predecessor of even twenty-five 
years ago. 

The journey from St. Paul to Puget Sound may be said to fall into eight 
geographical divisions, with well-marked natural boundaries, and corresponding 
in the main to the divisions into which the line has been formed for oper- 
ating purposes. The first extends to the Red River of the North, a distance 
of 275 miles, lying wholly in the State of Minnesota. 

The great attractions of this State are its pine forests, covering nearly one- 
half of its entire area, and its numerous beautiful lakes. Of the latter, there 
are no fewer than 215 within twenty-five miles of St. Paul, and they extend 
right through the central part of the State, on both sides of the railroad, to 
the prairie region bordering upon the Red River. Many of them are of 
exceeding beauty, especially in the district known as the 

LAKE PARK REGION, 

a richly diversified section of country, presenting the most charming scenery. 

Among the most famous, are Lake Minnewaska, on the Little Falls and 
Dakota division of the road, fifty-nine miles from its junction with the main 
line ; Clitherall and Battle Lakes, on the Fergus Falls and Black Hills branch ; 
and Detroit Lake, on the direct line to the West, 230 miles from St. Paul. All 
these have fine pebbly beaches, lined with beautiful borders of timber, and 
their accommodations for all classes of visitors — anglers, sportsmen and 
families — are exceptionally good. 

Like all the waters of Minnesota, they teem with fine, gamey fish of many 
varieties. The accomplished editor of the American Angler, writing in his 
well-known journal, after a visit to the Northwest in the summer of 1885, 
stated, that, during a life of nearly a quarter of a century as an angler, no experi- 
ence with a rod had equaled in variety and weight the two days' fishing he had 
had on Detroit Lake. Nor was Mr. Harris' success exceptional. A score of 
one hundred pounds per day on two rods, is, as he goes on to state, considered 
quite a modest record. 

For what is locally regarded as a good catch, we must turn to that of the 
three gentlemen who, on the afternoon of June ist, 1885, brought in, as the 
result of less than three days' work, 603 pike, 138 black bass, 178 rock bass, 28 
cat-fish and 25 pickerel; the entire catch weighing 2,321 pounds. This "fish 
story " is well authenticated. Eastern anglers can have no conception how full 
of fine fish, of many varieties, these Minnesota lakes are. For black and rock 
bass, mascalonge, pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and an infinite variety of smaller 
fish, a recent writer in the American Angler pronounces Detroit Lake the finest 



10 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

fishing ground on the continent. Nor need any angler or sportsman — for prairie 
chickens, ducks and deer are abundant — expect to have to look to sport to 
make up for the. deficiencies of accommodation; for the Hotel Minnesota is said, 
on the liighest authority, to be a gem of a hostelry for anglers, every facility 
and convenience they could wish for being obtainable iit moderate charges. 

The scenic attractions, also, are of a high order, the natural features of the 
surrounding country being of the most diversified character. The air is pure 
and invigorating, and hay fever and malarial diseases are absolutely unknown. 

Lake Park is another delightful resort in this region, having good fishing 
and boating within easy distance, and a first-class hotel adjoining the depot. 

Before arriving at Detroit, the traveler from St. Paul passes through 
Brainerd, the "City of the Pines." The selection of this city for the location 
of the machine shops of the railroad has given a great impetus to its growth ; 
nevertheless, for deer and bear hunting, it is still one of the best localities in 
the State. There is fine fishing, too, in its immediate vicinity, and its hotel 
accommodations also are very good. Here it is, also, that travelers from the 
East, coming by way of the Great Lakes, join the west-bound train. 

The distance to Brainerd from Duluth, the point of debarkation, at the west 
end of Lake Superior, is 114 miles. 

The traveler, who, in 1886, visits Mr. Proctor Knott's "Zenith City of the 
Unsalted Seas," will find the straggling village of five years ago a busy city of 
20,000 inhabitants, with abounding evidences of the commercial importance it 
has attained. By reason of the advantages afforded by the great waterway of the 
continent, for the direct shipment of wheat to the Eastern States or to Europe, 
Duluth has become almost as formidable a rival of Minneapolis as that city is 
of Chicago. It handled last year no fewer than 15,819,462 bushels of wheat, 
while its saw mills cut up 125,000,000 feet of lumber, and an extensive trade 
was also carried on in coal, salt and lime. 

A few miles distant, and connected with it by a railway whose construction 
involved the building of an exceedingly fine iron bridge, is the city of Superior, 
also with excellent terminal facilities. The eastern terminus of this, the Wis- 
consin division of the railroad, is Ashland, an important town and favorite 
summer resort on Lake Superior. Midway between this town and Duluth the 
line crosses the Brule river, whose excellent fishing grounds its recent opening 
has, for the first time, rendered accessible. 

The Brule river proper is a large stream, averaging 100 feet in width, of 
clear, cold water, flowing, its entire length, through one of the great forests of 
Wisconsin. With high banks, and free from low or marshy ground, it is an 
ideal trout stream. The best fishing on the river is to be had in a stretch of 
fourteen miles, extending six miles above, and eight miles below, the crossing of 
the Northern Pacific Railroad. The trout attain a large size, catches of three 
and four pound fish being an everyday occurrence. In the surrounding forest, 
game, including moose, deer, beaver and pheasant, is found in great abundance. 
Large quantities of venison were shipped hence by rail during the winter of 



Illllliillllliliil ^ 




L.ofC. 



(11) 



12 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

1885-86, the shipments from November 1st to December 15th alone exceeding 
13,000 pounds. 

Ahnost equal to the exciting pleasures of the chase is that of shooting the 
Brule river rapids in a canoe. Accompanied by an experienced guide, the 
visitor performs this feat without danger ; let him attempt it alone, and he is 
sure of a ducking. For the angler and sportsman, the Brule possesses an addi- 
tional attraction in the fact, that, while most excellent accommodations are to be 
had at the railroad crossing, including boats, fishing tackle and guides, there is 
no settlement of any kind within a considerable distance. 

The line from Duluth to Brainerd follows, for many miles, the winding valley 
of the St. Louis river, through scenery for the most part stern and wild, yet not 
without an occasional suggestion of the gentler beauty of the far-off You- 
ghiogheny. Between Fond du Lac and Thompson the river has a descent of 
500 feet in a distance of twelve miles, tearing its way with terrific force through 
a tortuous, rock-bound channel. The best point for observing the fine effect 
of these impetuous rapids and cascades, known locally as the Dalles of the 
St. Louis, is near the twentieth mile post westward from Duluth. 

Pursuing its way in the direction of Brainerd, the train traverses a country 
comparatively little known. Its scanty population is engaged almost entirely 
in logging, lumber manufacturing, and hunting, the immense forest covering 
the face of the country abounding with deer, bear, wolves, foxes and other 
game. 

Emerging from the deep recesses of the forest, and passing swiftly through 
the lake region already referred to, we find ourselves in a level prairie country, 
and can dimly descry, in the far distance, the thin, dark line which another hour's 
ride will show to be the narrow fringe of timber that marks the course of 
the famous Red River of the North, that true Arimaspes, with whose golden 
sands thousands and tens of thousands have been made rich. 

This, then, is the renowned Red River valley, the story of whose amazing 
fertility has attracted, from older States and still older countries, one hundred 
and fifty thousand people. The greatest influx has taken place since 1880, the 
increase in population between the census of that year and that in the spring of 
1885 being 38,719 on the Minnesota side of the river, and 54,918 on the Dakota 
side. 

Although there are vast tracts of land still uncultivated, the general appear- 
ance of the valley is that of a well-settled agricultural country. But this will 
occasion no surprise to those who remember that its annual wheat crop has 
now reached 25,000,000 bushels, and its crop of other cereals 15,000,000 bushels. 

Not a little surprise, however, is occasioned by the discovery that the 
"valley" of which the traveler has heard so much is not a valley at all, but a 
great plain, whose slope toward the river is so slight as to be wholly imper- 
ceptible. 

Where the railroad crosses the river, have sprung up the cities of Moorhead 
and Fargo, the former in Minnesota, the latter in Dakota. \N'ith such advan- 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 13 

tages of situation as they possess, and with the days of booms, with all their 
unhealthy excitement and fictitious values, gone, never, it is to be hoped, to 
return, these cities must continue to increase in commercial importance, with 
the development of the rich country surrounding them. 

Fargo is, indeed, the largest city in the entire Territory of Dakota, and will 
probably retain its position as such for many years to come. 

It is needless to repeat here the oft-told story of Dakota's marvelous 
growth. Time was when it was capable of being wrought up into a mosaic of 
wondrous interest and beauty; but, with the multiplication of agencies for giving 
it publicitv, its charm, for the present generation at least, has passed away. It 
will, nevertheless, afford the historian of the nineteenth century material for one 
of the most interesting and instructive chapters of his work. 

Writing, in 1828, his '-Principles of Population," the great historian of 
Europe said: "The gradual and continuous progress of the European race 
toward the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event: it is 
like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of 
God." But at that time the State of Illinois, but half way toward the Rocky 
Mountains and one-third of the way to the Pacific Ocean, was almost the limit 
of its mighty flow. Wisconsin, with no noteworthy settlements of its own, 
formed part of the Territory of Michigan ; Iowa was an altogether vacant 
region, without any form of organized government ; while other great States of 
to-day were still either mere parts of the Louisiana purchase, with as yet no 
separate identity, or were comprised within the then far-extending territory of 
the republic of Mexico. 

I1ie traveler to the Northwest, by the Northern Pacific Railroad, traverses 
that section of the far-extending dominion of the American people that was 
the last to be overspread by that great tide of civilization. He sees its evi- 
dences in the happy and prosperous homesteads that dot the fertile plains of 
Dakota, and nestle under the sheltering bluffs of the winding valleys of Mon- 
tana; he IS able to bear witness, also, to its having penetrated the fastnesses of 
the Rocky Mountains, and converted the hillsides of Eastern Washington and 
the fair lands of Oregon into smiling wheat fields and fruitful orchards. 

But, notwithstanding the hundreds of flourishing settlements scattered along 
the great highway of travel, with here and there a goodly town or city, he can 
not but wonder at the apparent sparseness of population when he remembers 
that one and a half millions of people have'their homes between the Great Lakes 
and Puget Sound. 

But let him consider the vast extent of the country ; let him call to mind 
that Dakota, with her 415,664 inhabitants, has yet 230 acres of land to every 
man, woman and child within her borders, her population averaging less than 
three to the square mile ; that the density of population in Oregon and Wash- 
ington is but two and one-half and two to the square mile, respectively; while 
both Montana and Idaho have considerably more square miles than they have 
inhabitants. 



14 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

The county of Cass, which stretches westward from Fargo, is one of the 
best settled sections of the Northwest, there being no land whatever subject to 
entry. It contains some of the largest wheat farms in the world, and it has 
produced more than one wheat crop of 5,000,000 bushels. This county has an 
actual wealth of over $20,000,000, and, with its 120 school houses and number- 
less churches, it may be taken as admirably illustrating both the capabilities of 
the country and the character of the people who are building it up. 

At Dalrymple, eighteen miles from Fargo, and at Casselton, two miles 
farther west, are the 

GREAT WHEAT FARMS 

of Mr. Oliver Dalrymple, comprising some 50,000 acres. Continuing west- 
ward, we pass, in rapid succession, various flourishing settlements, among them 
being Valley City, on the vSheyenne river, the judicial seat of Barnes county. 

Presently the train descends into the valley of the James, or Dakota, river, 
and the prosperous city of Jamestown is reached. 

From this point a branch line extends northward, ninety miles, to Minne- 
waukan, at the west end of Devil's Lake. This remarkable body of salt water, 
with its deeply indented and richly wooded shores, where the briny odor of the 
ocean mingles with the fragrance of the prairie flower, is surrounded by some 
of the best farming lands in Dakota. Its attractions for the tourist, angler and 
sportsman have obtained wide recognition, fish and game being very plentiful, 
the climate highly salubrious, the scenery picturesque, and the hotel accommo- 
dations good. The James river is said to be the longest unnavigable river on 
the continent, if not in the world, its flow, for hundreds of miles, being distin- 
guished by scarcely any perceptible increase of volume. 

Crossing a high table land, 1,850 feet above sea-level, and 950 feet higher 
than the Red river at Fargo, and known geographically as the Coteaux de 
Missouri, the train rapidly pursues its way past various large and well-managed 
farms to Bismarck, the capital of the Territory. 

This city has long commanded an important trade with various settlements 
on the Upper Missouri, the steamboats employed having transported as much as 
45,000,000 pounds of freight within a single brief period of navigation. It is 
the shipping and distributing point of a vast area whose only railroad facilities 
are those afforded by the great transcontinental line that here crosses the 
Missouri river. With the various important settlements that have been estab- 
lished in that great tract of country, Bismarck has either stage or steamboat 
communication. While, however, river navigation is limited to a comparatively 
short season, the stages run regularly all the year round, having even been 
known not to miss a single trip, or to be more than a few hours late, during 
an entire winter. 

But it is not the Fargos, the Jamestowns or the Bismarcks with which the 
tourist chiefly concerns himself. They attract his attention only because of 
the evidence they afford of the development and stability of the country, and 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 15 

the enterprise of the people, and he is far more interested in the crossing of the 
Missouri river, than in either of the two cities that frown at each other across 
its turbid waters. 

The bridge, by which the railroad is carried across the great river, here 
2,800 feet in breadth, although 3,500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, is a 
structure of immense strength, and not more substantial than it is graceful. It 
consists of three spans, each of 400 feet, and two approach spans, each of 113 
feet, with a long stretch of strongly built trestle work over the gently sloping 
west bank of the river. 

Here the train runs into Mandan, a pleasant little city, nestling under low 
ranges of hills which encompass it on three sides. This is the terminus of the 
Missouri and Dakota divisions of the road. The change from Central to Mount- 
ain time is made at this point, and the west-bound traveler sets his watch back 
one hour. 

The country west of the Missouri river presents an entirely different 
appearance from that through which the tourist has been traveling since he 
entered the Territory at Fargo. It is more diversified ; its numerous streams, 
with handsome groves of Cottonwood upon their banks, meandering through 
pleasant valleys, clothed, where still uncultivated, with that nutritious bunch 
grass, which, but a few short years ago, made them the favorite feeding grounds 
of the buffalo. The vast beds of lignite coal that underlie this portion of the 
Territory crop out at various points, twelve car loads being mined daily at Sims, 
35 miles west of Mandan, for shipment by rail. The most important settle- 
ments on this division of the road are Gladstone and Dickinson. 

Twenty miles west of the latter town, the line enters the singular and pic- 
turesque region known as the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri. For a full 
hour the train pursues its way through scenery of which the whole world is not 
known to afford any counterpart. 

The product of natural forces, still working to the same end, the picture 
that meets the astonished gaze of the traveler, suggests, where it does not 
utterly bewilder, either supernatural agency or the operation of laws whose reign 
has ceased. Reasonable hypotheses all failing, one's imagination connects the 
weird and mysterious scene with some early geologic epoch when, perchance 
under the brooding darkness of night, the yet plastic earth was tortured by 
some wild spirit of Caprice into the fantastic forms in which we see it to-day. 
But evidences of intelligent design are not altogether wanting, and we turn 
from mounds of wonderful regularity and symmetry of form, standing like 
Egyptian pyramids, to reproductions of the frowning battlements of Gibraltar 
or Ehrenbreitstein, or the dome and towers of some great cathedral. 

Marvelous as they are, however, these forms and outlines excite even less 
astonishment than the wealth of coloring in which they are arrayed. Composed 
largely of clay, solidified by pressure, and converted into terra-cotta by the 
slow combustion of underlying masses of lignite, each dome and pyramid and 
mimic castle is encircled with chromatic bands presenting vivid and startling 



IG l^HROUGH WONDERLAND. 

contrasts. Huge petrifactions and vast masses of scoria contribute to the 
weirdness of the scene, and, as if to complete its plutonic appearance, smoke 
goes up unceasingly from unquenchable subterranean fires. 

It is a mistake to suppose that these lands are worthless for agricultural or 
stock-raising purposes. The valleys and ravines are covered with nutritious 
grasses, and thousands of cattle may be seen grazing where the buffalo and 
other herbivorous wild animals were wont to roam in days gone by. The term 
" Bad Lands " is a careless and incomplete translation of the designation bestowed 
upon the country by the early French voyageurs, who described it as " mauvaises 
terres pour traverser. 

At the crossing of the Little Missouri, the Marquis de Mores, a wealthy 
young French nobleman, has established the headquarters of an extensive stock 
raising and dressed meat shipping business. 

From this point, Medora, excursions may be made to Cedar Caiion, one of 
the most interesting localities in the Bad Lands; or to the burning mine, where 
may be seen, raging, perhaps the most extensive of the subterranean fires of the 
entire region. It is also a good point from which to start out on hunting 
expeditions, large game being by no means exterminated. 

Sixteen miles beyond the Little Missouri, the train passes Sentinel Butte, a 
lofty peak rising precipitously from the plain on the south side of the railroad. 
One mile more and the Montana boundary is crossed, at an elevation of 2,840 
feet above sea-level. 

In crossing the great Territory of Dakota, the tourist has traveled 367 miles , 
in traversing that of Montana, he performs a journey of no less than 800 miles, 
almo^t equivalent to the distance from New York to Indianapolis. Fortunately, 
the luxurious appointments of the train render weariness well nigh impossible, 
and the trip hourly becomes more interesting and enjoyable. 

At Glendive, 692 miles from St. Paul, the road enters the valley of the 
Yellowstone, the windings of which famous river it follows, more or less closely, 
for 340 miles. 

The valley, from five to ten miles in. width, is inclosed by high bluffs of clay 
and sandstone, their curious formations occasionally reminding the traveler of 
the Bad Lands, though they have but little variety of color. 

If the Red River of the North may justly be regarded as the true Arimaspes, 
the Yellowstone may, with equal propriety, be designated the modern Amphry- 
sus. It is upon its banks and those of its tributaries that there has been 
developed, since the opening of the Northern Pacific Railroad, that vast graz- 
ing interest which has given Montana as great a reputation for its stock as 
Dakota has for its wheat. 

For many years, — up to and including the winter of 1881-82, — this was the 
finest buffalo hunting country on the continent. But the slaughter that season 
was enormous, 250,000 hides being shipped East, principally from Miles City. 
Few have been seen since that time. There are hunters who believe that small 
herds might still be found north of the international boundary; but, so far as the 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 17 

United States is concerned, the buffalo is practically extinct. There is, how- 
ever, a small herd in the National Park. Safe from the hunter's deadly re- 
peater, they will probably multiply rapidly, as it may be supposed that they will 
soon know instinctively the limits within which they are unmolested. 

Miles City, a few years ago the principal rendezvous of the hunter, is now 
the great resort of the grazier and cowboy, it being the metropolis of the stock 
interest of the Territory. 

The development of this interest within recent years has been as rapid as 
that of wheat raising in Dakota, and the economist who should turn to the 
United States census reports for 1880 for the present condition of any consid- 
erable section of the Northwest would be led seriously astray. 

In 1880, Montana contained 490,000 cattle and 520,000 sheep. According 
to a recent report of the Governor of the Territory, it contains, at the present 
time, 900,000 cattle, 1,200,000 sheep, and 120,000 horses. The grazing interests 
of the West are moving steadily toward Eastern Montana ; for, so rapidly do 
cattle thrive on the nutritious grasses of these northern valleys, that a yearling 
steer is worth $10 more in Montana than in Texas. 

Glendive, already mentioned as the point at which the railroad enters the 
Yellowstone valley, is .second only to Miles City in importance as a shipping 
and distributing point. It is also a divisional terminus of the railroad. 

Two miles west of Miles City is Fort Keogh, one of the largest and most 
beautiful military posts in the United States. It was established in 1877 by 
Gen. Nelson A. Miles, as a means of holding in check the warlike Sioux. 
There are but few Indians to be seen now along the line of the railroad, and 
those are engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits. The extinction of the 
buffalo has rendered the Indian much more amenable to the civilizing influ- 
ences brought to bear upon him than he formerly was, and very fair crops of 
grain are now being raised at the various agencies. At the Devil's Lake 
Agency, 60,000 bushels of wheat were raised in 1885, and purchased by the 
United States Government at $1 per hundred pounds. The Crows, along the 
northern border of whose reservation — nearly as large as the State of Massa- 
chusetts — the road runs for two hundred miles, are said to be the richest 
nation in the world, in proportion to their numbers, their wealth aggregating 
$3,500 per head. This, however, is due to the natural increase of their live 
stock, chiefly ponies, rather than to their own industry and thrift. 

Out amid the solitudes of the far Northwest — for it must not be supposed 
that the entire country is a succession of settlements — it is wonderful with 
what interest the traveler regards that trivial event of daily occurrence, the meet- 
ing of the east-bound train. But, as he peers through the car window, or 
stands out on the platform, in critical survey of its passengers, it probably does 
not occur to him that he is as much an object of curiosity to them as they aue, 
each of them, to him. He represents the far East of this great continent, they 
the far West. He, perchance, is making his first trip to the Pacific slope, they 
theirs to the Great Lakes or the Atlantic coast. Among them, however, may 
2 




VIEWS OF "OLD FAITHFUL" GEYSER, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 

(18) 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 10 

be distinguished merry groups of returning tourists, while, reclining in a luxu- 
rious Pullman car, or tempting dyspepsia with the rich and varied dainties of 
the dining car, may be seen one of the early settlers of California, a weather- 
beaten pioneer, who reached the Pacific slope by way of the Horn, twenty years 
ahead of the first transcontinental railway, and now goes east, by the Wonder- 
land route, to revisit the scenes of his childhood. 

Twenty-nine miles east of Billings, the next divisional terminus and impor- 
tant trading pomt on the line of the road, the traveler will observe, rising from 
the right bank of the river, a huge mass of sandstone, interesting as bearing 
upon its face the name of William Clarke, cut in the rock b}^ the veteran explorer 
himself, when he visited the locality in iSo6. He will, about the same time, be 
able dimly to descry the peaks of the Big Snow Mountains, which, at first 
scarcely distinguishable from the fleecy clouds that hang around them, subse- 
quently loom up grandly, constituting one of the most beautiful pieces of 
scenery in the Northwest. 

The disciple of Izaak Walton will not have traveled 225 miles along the 
banks of the Yellowstone without having seen many an inviting spot for indul- 
gence in what his great master called the most calm, quiet and innocent of all 
recreations. His arrival, therefore, at Billings, the largest town on the upper 
river, and the metropolis — notwithstanding that it has a population of only 
2,000 — of a region larger than Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia or Indi- 
ana, affords a not unfitting opportunity for a brief reference to the incompara- 
ble trout fishing afforded by the numerous streams accessible from points on 
the Montana and Yellowstone divisions of the road. 

The Yellowstone river itself, west of Billings, has no superior as a trout 
stream. It contains trout of four distinct varieties, and fishing is so easy as 
at times to be in danger of losing its charm. The individual scores of various 
tourists, reported in the American Angler during the summer and fall of 1885, 
and not containing any that were phenomenally large, averaged twenty-five 
trout per hour for each rod, a record with which the most ardent angler ought 
surely to be satisfied. A majority of these scores were made in the vicinity of 
Livingston, near which town another visitor is reported to have caught twenty- 
one fine, large trout "after supper," while two others are stated to have 
brought in 160 as the result of "a day's sport." The Yellowstone also 
contains a gamey fish known to local anglers as grayling, but pronounced by 
Mr. W. C. Harris to be the whitefish {Corregonus tiillil'ce). That gentleman 
refers, in a recent article, to the abundance, in these waters, of the celebrated 
" cut-throat " trout, whose size and abundance, in conjunction with the 
picturesqueness of its habitat, will, he adds, when generally known, "make a 
visit to the Yellowstone imperative to the angler who aspires to a well-rounded 
life as a rodster." Among other waters, mention may be made of Rosebud 
Lake, a beautiful spot reached by wagon from Billings, where the trout fishing 
is declared to be splendid ; Little Rosebud Creek, near Stillwater, where 
eighty-seven trout are reported to have been caught in four hours with a single 



30 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

rod ; Prior Creek, near Huntley ; Mission Creek, twelve miles east of Liv- 
ingston; and Sixteen- Mile Creek, sixteen miles from Townsend, all of which 
are said by visitors to afford excellent sport. 

It must not, however, be supposed that the angler enjoys a monopoly of 
sport in this country of varied attractions; for grouse and ducks are plentiful, 
as are also, on the mountain ranges, deer, elk and antelope. 

Passing Springdale, where the traveler will observe hacks in readiness to 
convey visitors to Hunter's Hot Springs, two and one-half miles distant, the 
train approaches, amid scenery increasing in grandeur, the little city of Liv- 
ingston. Whatever interest may, in the near future, attach to this place as a 
resort of the gentle brotherhood from all parts of the continent, it will cer- 
tainly fall short of that which will belong to it as the gateway of that world- 
renowned region, the 

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, 

" Situated," to quote the distinguished geologist, Professor John Muir, of 
California, who recently visited it, "in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, on the 
broad, rugged summit of the continent, amid snow and ice, and dark, shaggy 
forests, where the great rivers take their rise, it surpasses in wakeful, exciting 
interest any other region yet discovered on the face of the globe." While it 
contains the most beautiful and sublime of mountain, lake and forest scenery, its 
fame rests, not upon that, but upon the extraordinary assemblage of the curious 
products of Nature's caprice, and the infinitely wonderful manifestations of almost 
extinct forms of her energy that are found within its borders. Approached 
by a branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad, extending southward from Liv- 
ingston to its northern boundary, and the only railroad within one hundred 
miles, this remarkable region has, by a judicious expenditure of public money 
and by admirable individual and corporate enterprise, been rendered so 
easy of exploration that the tourist may within the brief period of five days 
visit all its most interesting points. 

So majestically do the snow-capped mountains tower above the lesser hills 
that inclose the charming valley whose various windings the railroad follows, 
from Livingston to Cinnabar, that the traveler can scarcely believe that 
still more magnificent scenery lies beyond. And truly the cloud-piercing 
Emigrant's Peak, with its famous mining gulch ; the yet loftier Electric 
Peak; the colossal Sphinx; and that most singular formation, the Devil's Slide, 
form the most fitting introduction that the human mind can conceive to the 
wonders of the National Park. 

Conveyed by an excellently equipped Concord coach from the terminus of 
the railroad to the hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs, six miles distant, the tourist 
finds himself surrounded by all the conveniences of modern hotel life. 

And within full view of the hotel, from which they are distant but a few 
hundred yards, are the exquisitely filigreed and richly colored terraces formed by 
the Mammoth Hot Springs, not the least of the wonders of this famous region. 



THRO UGH 1 J ^ONDERLAND. 



21 



Here one hardly knows whether to admire more the dehcacy of the formation or 
that of the coloring, the former not being excelled by that of the finest lace, 
while the latter surpasses, both in brilliancy, harmony, and subtle gradations, 
any chromatic effects known to exist beyond the limits of this enchanted 
ground. 

The keenest interest of the newly arrived tourist, however, usually centres 
in those constantly recurring evidences of tremendous force, the geysers. 
With few and unimportant exceptions, these are found within the limits of 
certain distinctly marked areas, known as the upper, middle, lower and Norris 
basins, to which one or two days' time is devoted, according to circumstances. 
The most celebrated of the geysers — those with whose names the world has 
been made familiar by the pen, brush or camera of author or artist — are in the 
upper basin. Here are found the Giant and Giantess, the Castle and Grotto, 
the Bee Hive, the Splendid and the Grand. Here, too, is Old Faithful, the con- 
stancy of whose hourly eruption makes it impossible for even the most hurried 




MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS HOTEL— YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 

visitor to the upper basin to leave without witnessing at least one display of its 
tremendous energy. 

The reader, who, not having visited the National Park, has yet gazed into 
some of the profound gorges to be found in the great mountain ranges of the 
far West, will read with astonishment, if not with incredulity, that there is but 
one caiion in the world, — the Grand Canon of the Yellowstone. Perhaps slightly 
exceeded in depth, as it certainly is in gloom, it is yet made to stand pre- 
eminent among the natural wonders of the world by the majesty of its cataract 
and the gorgeous blazonry of its walls. To say that the former — no mere 
silver ribbon of spray, but a fall of great volume— is a little more than twice the 
height of Niagara, would, by means of a familiar comparison, enable almost 
any one to form a not altogether inadequate conception of its grandeur. But 
for the matchless adornment of its walls, we have no available comparison ; 
naught but itself can be its parallel. One great writer describes it as being 
hung with rainbows, like glorious banners. Another, borrowing from Mr. 



22 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

Ruskin, likens it to a great cathedral, with painted wnidows, and full of treas- 
ures of illuminated manuscript. But, as we take our stand on the brink of the 
Falls, with twelve miles of sculptured rock spread out before us, rising from 
1,500 to 2,000 feet in height, and all aflame with glowing color, we have to 
acknowledge, with a distinguished writer and a no less celebrated artist, that, 
neither by the most cunningly wrought fabric of language, nor the most skillful 
manipulation of color, is it possible to create in the mind a conception answer- 
ing to this sublime reality. For countless ages, frost and snow, heat and 
vapor, lightning and rain, torrent and glacier, have wrought upon that myste- 
rious rock, evolving from its iron, its sulphur, its arsenic, its lime and its lava, 
the glorious apparel in which it stands arrayed. And the wondrous fabrication 
is still going on. The bewildered traveler would scarcely be surprised to see 
the gorgeous spectacle fade from his vision like a dream : but its texture is 
continually being renewed ; the giant forces are ever at work ; still do they — 

" Sit at the busy loom of time and ply. 
Weaving for God the garment thou seest Him by." 

For the minor wonders of this world of marvels, the formations of geyserite 
and the petrified forests. Tower and Gibbon Falls and the cliffs of volcanic 
glass, the caldrons of boiling mud and transparent pools of sapphire blue, the 
reader is referred to special guides to the Park. 

It only remains to be stated that there is regularly established transporta- 
tion daily between all the principal points, that the distances are not fatiguing, 
that the charges are reasonable, and the equipment everything that could be 
desired. 

The angler need scarcely be reminded that this is the far-famed region 
where the juxtaposition of streams of hot and cold water enables him to cook 
his fish as fast as he can catch them, without moving from his seat or taking 
them off the hook ! 

WESTWARD STILL. 

Resuming his westward journey at Livingston, the traveler finds himself 
ascending the first of the two great mountain barriers that had to be sur- 
mounted by the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railroad. By a grade of 116 
feet to the mile, the line reaches, twelve miles from Livingston, an elevation of 
5,565 feet above sea-level. Here it is carried under the crest of the range by a 
tunnel 3,610 feet in length, from which it emerges into a fine, rocky canon, at 
the western portal of which is the military post of Fort Ellis. A few minutes 
more, and the train runs into Bozeman, a beautifully situated and flourishing 
little city of twenty years' growth. Few cities can boast of more magnificent 
scenery, majestic snow-capped ranges standing out against the sky on every 
side. 

Westward for thirty miles extends the rich and fertile Gallatin valley. It is 
no uncommon thing to get forty bushels of hard spring wheat, or sixty bushels 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 23 

of fall wheat, to the acre in this valley, and its barley is of such superior 
excellence as to be in great demand for malting purposes at Milwaukee and 
other Eastern cities. 

Twenty-nine miles west of Bozeman, are Gallatin City, and the bright little 
town of Three Forks, commanding the valleys of the Madison and Jefferson, 
the agricultural lands of which, now being brought under cultivation, are not 
inferior to those of the older settled valley of the Gallatin. 

Four miles more, and the tourist comes upon a point of considerable geo- 
graphical interest, the three mountain streams just mentioned pouring their 
waters uito a common channel, to form the Missouri river. It is through a 
rocky canon, abounding in wild and magnificent scenery, that the greatest river 
on the continent enters upon its long course of 4,450 miles. For nearly fifty 
miles, the line follows its various windings, until finally the river runs away 
northward through that profound chasm known as the Grand Canon of the 
Missouri, or the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. Visitors to Helena will find 
an excursion to the Grand Canon, occupying not necessarily more than two 
days' time, one of the most delightful experiences of their transcontinental 
journey. 

The most important town between Bozeman and Helena, is Townsend, the 
shipping and distributing point for no inconsiderable portion of one of the best 
counties in Montana. It has daily communication by coach with White Sul- 
phur Springs, a health resort of great local repute. This coming rival of older 
and hitherto more famous spas, lies in a beautiful valley, 5,070 feet above sea- 
level, and surrounded by the grandest of Rocky Mountain scenery. Its accom- 
modations for visitors of all classes are most excellent, including, as they do, 
one of the best hotels in the Territory. Six miles distant are Castle Mountain 
and Crystal Cave, the latter a cavern of great extent, having twenty-three sepa- 
rate chambers, full of curious and beautiful stalactitic and stalagmitic forma- 
tions. The town, mountain and cavern were all fully described and admirably 
illustrated in the West Shore Magazine iox July, 1885. 

Not so much by way of tribute, either to its own beauty or that of its sit- 
uation, as in recognition of its wealth, its commercial importance and the com- 
manding position it has so long occupied in the mining world, Helena, the 
capital of the Territory, is called the Queen of the Mountains. Situated on the 
eastern slope of the continental divide, 1,155 utiles from St. Paul, it became a 
great distributing point and financial centre, even when hundreds of miles of 
mountain and prairie separated it from the nearest railroad. Dependent upon 
the Missouri river for its commercial intercourse with the world, it was in a 
state of well-nigh complete isolation during the greater part of every year. 
Under other conditions, this comparative isolation would have stunted its 
growth and cramped the energies of its people. But with the assured product 
of their labor such a commodity as gold, with its universality of demand and 
stability of value, the sturdy settlers in Last Chance Gulch had always the most 
powerful of incentives to restless energy. With the steadily increasing pro- 



24 THROUGH WONDERLAXD. 

duction of the precious metals, if not in its own immediate vicinity, at least in 
the country it dominated, Helena grew rich, until now it claims to be the 
wealthiest city of its size in the L' nited States. 

It was on the afternoon of the 15th of July, 1864, that a party of four 
miners, weary and sick at heart, pitched their tents in that desolate-looking 
gulch where now stands this flourishing city. Disappointed at not being able 
to secure claims in the then prosperous camp of Virginia City, and reduced to 
great extremity, they regarded the little gulch on the Prickly Pear as their 
"last chance." Finding gold in paymg quantities, they resolved to settle 
down ; and it is said, that, before two years had elapsed, each of them was worth 
$50,000. 

In the meantime, the little camp in what was thenceforward known as 
Last Chance Gulch had attracted miners from all parts of the Rocky Mount- 
ains. It is stated, in a recent official publication of the Territory, that the 
gulch yielded $30,000,000 during the first three seasons it was worked; but 
these figures so far exceed the popular estimate, that they are repeated only 
under reserve. The present annual production is said to be about $50,000. 
It would seem to the visitor as though every square foot of ground had been 
dug up, and, if it be his first experience of a placer mining district, its appear- 
ance will strike him as singularly novel. 

The romance of mining is well illustrated by the story of the citizen of 
Helena who was digging out a cellar to his house, when a passing stranger 
offered to remove the pile of earth that was being heaped up in the roadway, 
and promised to return with one-half of whatever dust he might obtain by the 
washing to which he proposed to submit it. Permission granted and the earth 
removed, the citizen thought no more of the matter. Great, therefore, was his 
astonishment when, a few days later, the half-forgotten face of the stranger 
appeared at the door, and he was handed, as his share of the yield of that 
unpr(.)mising dirt, the equivalent of $650. 

Possibly, however, a story involving only a paltry sum of three figures, may 
not answer to the reader's conception of the romantic. It does not excite his 
imagination. He expects to read of millions. If so, let us turn to the story 
of the miner, who, confident that he was the possessor of a valuable claim, 
held on to it in spite of the most adverse circumstances, hiring himself out in 
winter that he might have a little money wherewith to work upon his claim in 
summer, until, at last, after eight years of indomitable perseverance and patient 
toil, he was able to sell his property for $2,250,000 ; or that of the weary and 
penniless wanderer, who, having tramped all the way from Nevada, began a 
toilsome search, to be continued through much suffering and privation for 
several years, but destined to be rewarded at last by the discovery of one of 
the richest veins of gold in the Territory, a vein that has yielded, up to the 
present time, $4,000,000 worth of gold. 

The tourist will find an hour's chat with an old-timer an interesting and 
not altogether unprofitable exercise, albeit he may find it hard to discriminate 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



25 



between statements that he may veftture to repeat and those made for his 
especial benefit as a tenderfoot. 

He need not, however, discredit such stories as that a four-mide team once 
hauled to Fort Benton, for transportation down the 
Missouri river, two and one-half tons of gold, 
valued at $1,500,000; nor yet, that in the early 
days potatoes were worth fifty 
cents per pound, and flour one 
dollar, or that oranges were sold 
at a dollar each, and small pine- 
apples at seven dollars. These 
are facts not more startling than 
nian\ others that might be quoted, 
the mining world, at least, truth 
I-, p i>>uivclv stran,i4cr than fiction. 




The annual production 

of the precious metals in 

Montana has increased 

enormously within recent years, 

doublmg itself between 1880 and 

1882, and trebling between 1882 

;8S4. The annual output now approaches $30,000,000^ and the Ter- 

stands at the head of the gold-producing regions of the world, 



2r. THROUGH WONDERLAXD. 

notwithstanding that upward of $200,000,000 worth has been extracted from 
its soil. 

Among the many famous mines on the eastern slope of the mountains 
are the Drum Lumon, shipping $80,000 worth of bullion per month, of 
which fully one-half may be set down as profit; the Gloster, shipping $50,000 
worth per month; the Whitlach Union, long the most celebrated gold mine in 
the Territory; those of Red Mountain, said to be the most important unde- 
veloped mineral field in the United States; the Clark's Fork, bordering on the 
National Park, and now yielding, and with no railroad facilities, 8=55 tons of ore 
per day; those of the Helena Mining and Reduction Company at Wickes, 
reached by a branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad from Prickly Pear Ji^inc- 
tion, and known to have shipped as much as $125,000 worth of ore in a 
single month ; and the Lexington, which has produced silver ore averaging in 
assay value from $15,000 to $20,000 per ton. Visitors to the New Orleans 
Exposition of 1884-85 will remember the magnificent exhibits from the last- 
mentioned mine, as also those from the Cable and Drum Lumon mines, the 
latter including one solid chunk of high-grade ore weighing 1,715 pounds. 

The most valuable gold nugget ever found in Montana is said to have been 
worth about $3,200. There is a nugget in the vault of the First National Bank 
at Helena, weighing 47.7 ounces, and valued at $945.80. But the most interest- 
ing sight in the city is, undoubtedly, the process of assaying at the LInited 
States Assay Office, where may also be seen those marvelously adjusted and 
delicately graduated scales, by which the weight of even an eye-lash can be 
exactly determined. 

The next .stage of the traveler's journey westward from Helena lies across 

THE MAIN RANGE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 

It is by way of the Mullan Pas.s — so named from the fact of Lieut. John 
Mullan, LT. S. A., having built a wagon road through it in 1867, to connect 
Fort Benton, Mont., with Fort Walla Walla, W. T., — that the railroad is carried 
over the continental divide. The highest elevation of the pass itself is 5,855 
feet ; but, by the construction of a tunnel 3,850 feet in length, the line was 
made to reach the western slope without attaining a higher elevation than 
5,547 feet. 

It is not until Butler is reached, thirteen miles from Helena, that either the 
scenery or the construction of the road calls for special notice. But at that 
point the scenery becomes exceedingly picturesque, the rocks towering above 
the pines and spruce like the ruins of some ancient .stronghold. From now on, 
too, the tourist will find constant employment in observing how the gigantic 
barriers, which seem to forbid all further progress, are, one after another, over- 
come. 

Amid scenery increasing in wildness and grandeur, the train pursues its tor- 
tuous course ; through Iron Ridge Tunnel, near which the track forms an 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 27 

almost perfect letter S; across innumerable ravines; along rocky shelves and 
through deep cuttings, until at last it enters the eastern portal of the MuUan 
Tunnel. A few minutes later the traveler is looking out upon the grassy 
hills and pleasant valleys of the Pacific slope, the approach to the tunnel from 
the west presenting a singular contrast to the savage grandeur that distin- 
guishes the approach from the east. 

Following the valley of the Little Blackfoot, the train presently arrives at 
Garrison, where passengers desirous of visiting the most flourishing mining city 
on the American continent, if not in the world, must change cars. 

"The most flourishmg mining city on the American continent, if not in the 
world ! " exclaims the reader. Even so ; and yet we are not in Nevada, nor 
yet in Colorado; and, besides, the former is about played out; and, as for Lead- 
ville, every one remembers the disasters that overtook her, culminating, as they 
did, in the failure of all her four banks. The city is Butte, that, at the last 
United States census, had a population of only 3,363, but now claims six tmies 
that number, and has a monthly mining pay-roll of $620,000. 

The line from Garrison runs through the beautiful Deer Lodge valley, in 
which are many fine farms. Deer Lodge City, the judicial seat of the county, 
is pleasantly situated 4,546 feet above sea-level. Being well laid out, it presents, 
with its wide streets and handsome public buildings, an exceedingly attractive 
appearance. 

It is at the head of this valley, on the western slope of the main range of the 
Rocky Mountains, and fifteen miles from the Pipestone Pass, that there has 
been witnessed, during the last three or four years, that rapid growth of popula- 
tion and wealth that is without parallel, even in the marvelous annals of mining. 
Here, encompassed on three sides by lofty ranges of mountains, Butte pours 
forth the smoke of its innumerable furnaces; for not only is its production of 
silver so great that it has come to be designated the " Silver City," but its 
copper mines are such as to give employment to the most extensive smelting 
works in the United States. Its total production during 1885, valued at 
$15,000,000, viz., $5,000,000 worth of bullion and $10,000,000 worth of copper 
matte, was twice that of Utah, and three times that of Nevada. It also 
exceeded that of the whole of California, or the combined production of Idaho, 
New Mexico and Arizona. 

The leading silver mines of the district are the Alice, Moulton, Lexington 
and Silver Bow, which alone employ 210 stamps and produce 230 tons of ore 
daily. The magnificent appliances of the Alice mine, including the great 
Cornish pump that cost $40,000, are the wonder of every visitor. The process 
of reduction, here as elsewhere, is somewhat complex, especially in the case 
of the baser ores, being in part chemical and in part mechanical. It involves 
the crushing of the ore to powder, under the pressure of enormous bars of iron, 
weighing 900 pounds each, and known as "stamps," and its subsequent 
roasting in large, hollow cylinders, salt being largely employed in the former, 
and quicksilver in the latter, stage of the operation. The roasting mills of the 



28 THROUGH U'ONDERLAXD. 

Alice mines treat loo tons of ore per day, and their bullion product approaches 
$100,000 per month. 

The great Lexington property, which has produced $1,000,000 per annum 
for four j-ears, is owned by a French company. It claims to be the most 
complete mine in the entire West, and it is certainly one of the richest and most 
extensive. 

The Moulton and Silver Bow have a daily capacity of forty and thirty tons of 
ore respectively. They are magnificent properties, well developed and exceed- 
ingly productive. The former makes the proud boast of working its ore to a 
higher percentage of its value than any other mill in the district. 

But it is the copper mines and smelters that represent the largest capital ; 
give employment to the greatest number of men ; have the largest production, 
both in tonnage and aggregate value: and, it may be added, make the most 
smoke. 

At the head of the rich and powerful companies engaged in this industry, 
stands the Anaconda, — its mine at Butte, the greatest copper property in America; 
its smelting works, at the neighboring town of Anaconda, the largest of their 
kind in the world. Sold, five years ago, for an amount that would not now be 
more than sufficient to pay its employes a week's wages, its property is roughly 
estimated to be worth $15,000,000. With certain contemplated additions to its 
smelting capacity, it will handle daily 1,200 tons of ore, yielding 180 tons of 
matte, or 108 tons of pure copper. Its entire machinery run by water-power, 
it yet requires for its furnaces no less than 180 cords of wood per day ; in view 
of which enormous consumption it is stated to have recently let a contract for 
300,000 cords, representing upward of $1,000,000. Second only to this 
gigantic concern, is the Parrott Company, whose total matte output for 1884 
was 14,856,323 pounds, containing 9,324,805 pounds of pure copper, valued, 
including its silver contents, at about $1,250,000. With largely increased 
capacity, its production of pure copper will probably have reached 15,000,000 
pounds in the year just drawing to a close. Among other leading companies, 
may be mentioned the Montana, owning some of the richest and most steadily 
productive mining property in process of development ; Clark's Colusa, said 
to have in sight, above the 300-foot level, at least 150,000 tons of valuable 
ore ; and the Bell and Colorado, two of the richest copper-silver mines in 
the district. 

So much for the mines and smelting works of Butte. What of the city 
itself ? Briefly, it may be said to be a typical A\'estern town, as seen in flush 
times ; nothing too big for it, nothing too good ; its quivering energy finding 
expression, now in the erection of a $150,000 court house, and now in that of 
the finest opera house on the Pacific slope, outside of San Francisco ; its busi- 
ness enterprise filling magnificent stores with costly goods, suited to the tastes, 
pocket-books and spending proclivities of a community that on last Christmas 
eve spent $6,000 in presents in a single one of its stores. 

There are several good trout streams in the vicinitv of Butte, and it is 




FALLS OF THE GIBBON RIVER, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 



(20) 



30 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

pleasant to know that, in a city whose amusements are mainly of a very differ- 
ent character, there are those who know how to handle the rod. 

Proceeding westward from Garrison, the traveler will have some fine views 
of mountain scenery, including the snow-clad peaks of Mount Powell. Drum- 
mond, twenty-one miles west, is the station for the rich mining districts of New 
Chicago and Phillipsburg. Granite Mountain mine, near the latter place, is 
exceedingly rich. A vein of ore, six feet wide, and assaying from 125 to 2,000 
ounces of silver to the ton, is now being worked, the output reaching $120,000 
per month. 

Soon the train enters Hell Gate Cafion, at first a beautiful valley, from two 
to three miles in width, but narrowmg as we go westward, until from between 
its stupendous walls we suddenly emerge upon a broad plateau, where stands 
the city of Missoula. Formerly a remote and isolated frontier post, Missoula is 
now a place of considerable importance. Extending southward for ninety 
miles is the valley of the Bitter Root river, well watered, exceedingly fertile 
and thickly settled. Here are raised fine crops of wheat and oats, as well as 
vegetables, apples and strawberries. 

The tourist has now entered the finest game country in the Northwest. 
At any point along the line, for a distance of nearly three hundred miles, he 
will find deer, elk and bear in great abimdance. Let him but place himself on 
their trail, and he will certainly soon have them within gunshot. Even in the 
vicinity of Missoula there is excellent sport, one local trapper obtaining $160 
bounty for bear last season. Ducks and prairie chickens are also plentiful, 
and various species of trout abound in the mountain streams. 

The most interesting, as it is the most accessible, of the Indian reservations 
contiguous to the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, is that of the Flathead 
tribe, through which the Ime runs for many miles m the course of its north- 
westward sweep from Missoula. At Arlee station, the visitor is within five 
miles of the agency, and at Ravalli a like distance from St. Ignatius mission. 
For a full account of the excellent work carried on among the Indians by the 
Jesuit Fathers, together with an exceedingly interesting description of the Flat- 
head country generally, the reader is referred to an article in the Century 
Magazine for October, 1882, from the accomplished pen of Mr. E. V. Smalley, 
as well as to sundry articles in that gentleman's own magazine. The NortJnuest. 
From a point about 500 feet from the summit of Macdonald's Peak, a few miles 
north of Ravalli, there is a remarkable view of a deep mountain gorge known 
as Pumpelly Canon, which has many of the striking features of the Yosemite 
valley, in California. Two waterfalls, having an apparent height of about 800 
feet, leap nito this profound rocky caiion, and form a small circular lake of a 
dark blue color. This lake falls, by another cataract, into a second lake of 
exactly the same size and shape as the first, while still another cataract leaps 
from the lower lake into a deep ravine filled with magnificent forest trees. An 
excursion to Macdonald's Peak may be made from the mission in a single day. 
Tourists are, however, recommended to take blankets and provisions, and 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 31 

encamp upon the crest of the mountain to witness the sunrise. Saddle horses 
are obtainable at the mission, and there is a good trail all the way. 

Thompson Falls, loi miles west of Missoula, is the startmg point for the 
Coeur d'Alene mines. The distress that followed the arrival in this district, in 
1883, of several thousand half-starvmg adventurers, who, expecting to pick up 
in a few hours' time nuggets enough to make them rich for life, brought neither 
blankets to protect them from the cold of winter, nor the means of returning to 
their far-distant homes, or even of reaching less remote centres where work 
could be obtained, gave the Coeur d'Alene mines a blow from which they were 
slow to recover. The development that has since taken place, especially since the 
introduction of hydraulics, has, however, abundantly demonstrated that former 
claims as to the richness and permanence of the mines were well founded, and we 
shall probably soon see here the richest placer mining camp in the world. 

The matchless river scenery that has done so much toward placing the 
Northern Pacific Railroad system in the proud position it occupies to-day at 
the head of the scenic railways of America, is not alone that of the peerless 
Columbia. For 140 miles of its course, in Western Montana and the Pan- 
handle of Idaho, it follows the windings of a stream that for grand and 
imposing scenery is second only to that renowned river itself. Should the 
traveler wake up in the morning, anywhere between the point at which the 
waters of the Missoula empty themselves into the bright green flood of the 
Pend d'Oreille river and the head of Pend d'Oreille Lake, he will almost 
certainly suppose that it is in the current of the far-famed Columbia that he 
sees reflected, perhaps hundreds of feet beneath him, the varying forms of 
those stately mountains that soar thousands of feet above. But he is as yet 
almost a day's journey from the classic regions of the Columbia, albeit the 
lordly stream, whose scenery will be, hour after hour, a succession of surprises 
and delights to him, is one of the principal forks of that mighty river, whose 
still grander scenery it may be said to foreshadow in miniature. 

Between the Yellowstone National Park, on the one hand, and the Columbia 
river, on the other, Clark's Fork and the beautiful lake into which it widens 
out before turning northward to the British possessions, have been almost com- 
pletely overshadowed. But their ten thousand beauties will assert themselves. 
They have not to be sought for in out-of-the-way places, nor are they so localized 
that a mere passing glimpse is the only reward of strained attention as the train 
flies onward. On the contrary, from an early hour in the morning until long 
past noon, there is a continuous unfolding of scenes in which are combined, with 
Nature's inimitable skill and infinite variety, all that is grandest in mountain, 
all that is most graceful in woodland and stream. So evenly distributed are 
the beauties of this long stretch of river scenery, that it is not easy to single out 
particular points as calling for special notice. There are, however, two that 
must arrest the attention and command the admiration of every traveler. The 
first, one mile east of Cabinet, where the river, which has been flowing for some 
distance considerablv below the level of the railroad, enters a magnificent 



32 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

rocky gorge ; and the other, about the same distance east of Clark's Fork, 
where it flows, without a ripple, through a forest of stately pines, whose forms 
are, with singular fidelity, reflected in its clear and tranquil waters. Soon it is 
lost to view, but only to reappear, after a short interval, in the form of the lovely 

LAKE PEND D'OREILLE. 

One of the largest sheets of fresh water in the West, Lake Pend d'Oreille 
will certainly yield to none in the beauty and variety of its scenery. Fifty-five 
miles in extreme length, and from three to twelve miles in width, it has an 
irregular shore line of probably 250 miles, richly diversified with rock and 
foliage, and surmounted by lofty ranges of hills. The railroad follows the 
north shore of the lake for about twenty-five miles, passing several little settle- 
ments, among which are Hope, Kootenai and Sand Point. Such accommoda- 
tions as have hitherto been available to the visitor have been provided by 
respectable residents of Sand Point ; but for the season of 1886 arrangements 
will be made that will constitute Hope the more convenient halting place. 
That, also, will be the point of arrival and departure for steamers making the 
tour of the lake. 

While the view from the car windows is not to be compared with the scen- 
ery at the southern end of the lake, it must, nevertheless, be pronounced superb. 
In the immediate foreground, the green waters break soothingly upon a pebbly 
beach, or fall in crested waves. On the right and left recede into distance the 
deeply indented shores, here clothed with luxuriant forests, there bare and pre- 
cipitous. Yonder, nineteen miles away, is Granite Point, rising perpendicularly 
from the water 724 feet, with Granite Mountain behind it, towering 5,300 feet 
above the level of the lake, itself surmounted by the snowy peaks of Pack 
Saddle Mountain, and they, in turn, by the great purple range of the Ca^ur 
d'Alenes. 

Not a few Eastern travelers passing over the Northern Pacific Railroad have 
remarked upon the resemblance borne by the scenery of Lake Pend d'Oreille 
to that of their own famous Lake George. It is, however, if possible, even 
finer, the mountains being loftier, and the forests more luxuriant, than those 
inclosing the hitherto unrivaled lake in Northern New York. 

To fully set forth the attractions of this region for the sportsman, or to do 
anything like justice to its waters as fishing grounds, would require more space 
than is devoted in this pamphlet to the entire country between the Great Lakes 
and Puget Sound. Nowhere, probably, in the United States, is there such an 
abundance of large game as in the forests of Northwestern Montana and North- 
ern Idaho. W' ithin a few miles of any of the stations on Lake Pend d'Oreille may 
be found mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, caribou and moose, black and cinna- 
mon bear, and mountain sheep. Of winged game, geese, ducks and partridge 
are plentiful, and they may be shot at any season of the year. Various appli- 
cations have been made to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, by local 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



33 



hunters, for special rates for the shipment of game East ; but the Company has 
steadfastly refused to encourage the wholesale destruction of game for com- 
mercial purposes, preferring that it should be reserved for legitimate sport. 




LAKE PEND D'OREILLE, IDAHO. 



The true sportsman will immensely enjoy an excursion into the Kootenai 
country. The best route is from Kootenai station to Bonner's Ferry, on the 
Kootenai river, a distance of thirty-three miles by wagon road, and thence by 



34 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

boat, either down to the lake, a further distance of ninety miles, or up into the 
mountains. Complete camping outfits may be obtained from Spokane Falls, 
the nearest town on the line of the railroad. 

That the waters of Clark's Fork and Lake Pend d'Oreille are full of fine fish of 
many varieties, is established by overwhelming testimony. The want of a com- 
mon nomenclature, however, is somewhat embarrassing to one whose oppor- 
tunities for personal observation have been limited. Perhaps, therefore, it will 
be best to allow the local anglers to tell their own stories. Beginning with the 
town of Thompson's Falls, to which reference has already been made, we find 
a recent correspondent of the American Angler claiming for Clark's Fork an 
abundance of salmon trout, of a species of large lake trout, and a species of 
whitefish, known locally as "squaw fish." Salmon trout are, he says, caught at 
all times of the year, except in midwinter and during high water in the month 
of June. They average from one-half to two pounds each, and the fishing is 
best during early spring and late fall. Lake trout have been caught weighing 
as much as eighteen pounds each; but the average is about six pounds. The 
"squaw fish " is said to be gamey, but of comparatively little value for the table. 
The same correspondent says that the mountain streams emptying into Clark's 
Fork in the vicinity of Thompson's Falls, afford excellent mountain trout fish- 
ing, and he quotes large scores made by local anglers. At Heron, which, by 
the way, is a divisional terminus of the railroad, with a first-class hotel operated 
in connection with the dining car department, trout is said to be so abundant 
as to be thought nothing of ; "grayling," sometimes reaching ten pounds in 
weight, are almost as plentiful; and it is said to be no uncommon thing to see 
them jumping out of the water, pursued by large whitefish. Bull river, eight 
miles distant, yields salmon trout weighing up to twelve pounds. The waters 
of Lake Pend d'Oreille contain, in addition to the common lake trout, a species 
weighing from five to ten pounds each, and occasionally caught weighing as 
much as twenty pounds, speckled on both back and sides, and generally resem- 
bling Mackinac trout. They are a fine table fish, being much superior to lake 
trout. The " squaw fish " of this lake are said to resemble the pike. They 
weigh from one pound to five pounds each. From about the middle of August 
until the snow flies, the trout fishing is "the best in the world.'' There is also 
a fish resembling the herring, found in one part of the lake in immense shoals. 

Soon after leaving Lake Pend d'Oreille, the line enters a dense forest con- 
taining few settlements, and little that is interesting or picturesque, beyond the 
beautiful Lake Cocolala, a long but narrow sheet of water on' the north side of 
the track. On the borders of the forest the train pauses a moment at Rath- 
drum, the nearest point on the railroad to Fort Coeur d'Alene, on the lake of 
the same name. This lake even rivals, in the beauty of its waters and the 
grandeur of its mountain scenery, its more accessible neighbor. Lake Pend 
d'Oreille, while its conveniences for boating and fishing are equally good. 

At the station of Idaho Line, the train enters the Territory of Washington, 
pursuing its way in a southwesterly direction across the great Spokane Plain. 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 35 

A short run, and we are at Spokane Falls, a bright and busy little city, 
charmingly situated on the Spokane river, near the celebrated falls from which 
it takes its name. Built upon a gravelly plateau, sloping gently toward the 
river, overlooked by beautiful pine-clad hills, and with lofty mountain ranges in 
the far distance, Spokane Falls can not but produce a favorable impression 
upon the passing traveler. Its falls, which are its chief natural attraction, and 
will be the secret of the great commercial and manufacturing importance that 
undoubtedly awaits it, are situated on the north side of the town. The river 
is divided by basaltic islands into three great streams, curving toward each 
other, and pouring their floods into a common basin, from which the united 
waters come surging and foaming to make their final plunge of sixty-five feet 
into the deep chasm below. The tremendous force with which the river tears 
through its rocky channels, and hurls itself over the falls, is perhaps best illus- 
trated by a comparison with the Falls of St. Anthony, at Minneapolis. While the 
latter represent a force of 135,000 horse power, the former represents one of 
216,000 horse power, utilizable with equal facility. Several extensive flouring 
mills, as well as saw mills, are already in operation ; and there is no doubt that, 
with the development of the rich wheat country of Eastern Washington, there 
will come an immense extension of the manufacturing industries of Spokane Falls. 

It is probable that the town will soon have two important feeders in branch 
lines of railway, extending, the one northward to the Colville mining region, — 
the other southward to the Palouse wheat country. These lines will open rail- 
way communication with two of the richest sections of country west of the 
Rocky Mountains. 

Until within the last year or two, the settlements of the Colville valley have 
been confined to the scattered homes of ranchmen. But recently the tide of 
immigration that has been flowing into the Territory has reached this remote 
region, and agricultural operations of a general character are being engaged in. 
The valley is as fertile as it is beautiful, and not only fine wheat, but fruit of 
excellent quality, is being raised there. 

In the Chewelah district there have recently been found so many rich veins 
of silver that Mr. E. V. Smalley, who visited it in November, 1885, declares 
that it is almost certain to become, within a few years, the greatest silver camp 
on the continent. 

Sixteen and forty-one miles respectively westward from Spokane Falls, are 
Cheney and Sprague, in a good agricultural country, whose rapid development 
is building them up as solid and substantial towns. Cheney has a large hotel, 
and is, moreover, the nearest railway station to Medical Lake, a large sheet of 
water possessing remarkable curative properties, and situated nine miles west. 
Good hotels and bathing establishments having been erected, Medical Lake is 
now an exceedingly pleasant resort, the surrounding country being very 
attractive. 

From Palouse Junction, sixty-nine miles west of Sprague, a line extends 
eastward into the Palouse country. So far as regards scenery, a ride over this 



3G THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

line to Colfax and Moscow is as uninteresting a railroad journey as could well 
be found, 1 .e line following a series of valleys that have the appearance of 
having once formed the rocky bed of some considerable stream. 

Colfax is a busy little city in the Palouse river valley, hemmed in so closely 
on both sides that one of its rivals recently suggested that it might find it an 
advantage to be roofed over. But it does a considerable business for so small 
a place, shipping a large proportion of the agricultural produce of the valley, 
estimated, in 1885, at two million bushels of grain. The agricultural methods 
of Eastern Washington will strike most visitors as somewhat peculiar. It is not 
in every State of the Union, nor in every Territory, that the farmer can plow 
and sow " just when he gets ready." But here plowing and seeding may be seen 
in progress ten months out of every twelve, and instances have even been known 
of winter wheat being sown every month in the year, and all coming to harvest 
in its proper turn. ' And such crops ! Thirty, forty and fifty bushels to the acre 
are raised so easily, that, had the farmer a nearer market, he would soon get 
rich. The construction of the proposed branch southward from Spokane Falls 
will, however, give him facilities for shipping east over the Northern Pacific 
Railroad that will certainly pay him better than exporting to England by way 
of Portland, as he does at present. The self-binding harvester, so familiar an 
object in many other parts of the country, is here unknown, the grain being cut 
by immense "headers," propelled by from four to eight horses each. This 
strange-looking machine, an exemplification of the old saying, "the cart before 
the horse," is better adapted than any other to the peculiar conditions of the 
country, straw being of no value, and threshing usually going on simultaneously 
with the cutting of the grain, although the wheat may, after cutting, lie in the 
fields for many weeks without detriment. 

The climate of Eastern Washington, to which alone this remarkable state of 
things is due, differs entirely from that of the western half of the Territory, from 
which it is divided by the Cascade range of mountains. It is a mistake to 
suppose that the humidity which characterizes that portion of the Territory 
bordering on the Pacific Ocean, distinguishes it as a whole. On the contrary, 
the eastern half is remarkably dry, and that, too, without those extremes of 
temperature that usually accompany a dry climate. Should there be a spell of 
severe cold during the brief winter season, it is invariably cut short by the 
" Kuro-Siwo," or Japanese current, which, striking the coasts of British Columbia 
and Washington Territory, sends a warm wave over the entire Northwestern 
country, sometimes extending even to the valleys of Montana. 

Continuing westward from Palouse Junction, a run of little more than an 
hour brings us to Pasco, the eastern terminus of the Cascade division of the 
railroad. This important division, intended to establish direct communication 
between the magnificent harbors on Puget Sound and the Eastern States, is 
already operated to the extent of 122 miles, or nmety miles westward from 
Pasco, and thirty-two miles eastward from Tacoma. Its eastern section has 
given a great impetus to the development of the agricultural capabilities of the 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 37 

Yakima. Klickitat and Kittitas valleys, which are well adapted, not onl}^ to stock 
raising, but also to the cultivation of fruits and cereals. In this section wool 
growing is also engaged in with great success. This industry is one of consid- 
erable importance both in Washington and Oregon, the entire clip for 1885 
being no less than 13,000,000 pounds. 

There are few revelations more surprising to an Eastern tourist than that of 
the magnitude of some of the great Western rivers. The Snake river, for 
example, is known to him, if at all, merely as one of the various tributaries of 
the Columbia; and, when he finds himself crossing its mighty flood by a bridge 
1,672 feet in length, and learns that its force and volume are such that it drives 
itself like a solid wedge into the waters of the Columbia, he is apt to wonder 
that he knows so little about it. Future tourists will not regard this tributary 
stream with any the less interest for being told beforehand that it is longer than 
the Rhine, more than three times the length of the Hudson, and that, straight- 
ened out, it would reach from the Missouri valley to the Atlantic ocean. It is, 
moreover, a great commercial highway, being navigated by steamers of consid- 
erable tonnage for 150 miles. It flows for a long distance in a deep canon, the 
sides of which are so precipitous as to render the river almost inaccessible. 
Immense shutes have therefore been constructed for the transfer of the wheat 
that forms the staple product of the country from the warehouses on the high 
banks to the boats and barges anchored below. 

Another section of the famous wheat country of Southeastern Washington, 
identified with the unmusical name of Walla Walla, borne by the oldest and 
best town east of the Cascade Mountains, is reached by a branch line extending 
from Wallula Junction. With 100,000 acres of land cultivated to cereals, with 
800,000 apple trees, 100,000 pear, plum and peach trees, 25,000 grape-vines, 
large herds of cattle, and still larger flocks of sheep, the county of which 
Walla Walla is the judicial seat may be taken as fairly illustrating the varied 
capabilities of Eastern Washington. Scarcely less prosperous is the adjoining 
county of Columbia. These counties, however, being well settled, reference is 
made to them only as foreshadowing the future condition of those younger 
counties, adjacent to the Northern Pacific Railroad, which are now in course of 
settlement. In many of the latter the cultivation of the soil presents even 
fewer difficulties than in these older settled regions, in many parts of which 
there is scarcely an acre of level land to be found. 

Returning to Wallula Junction, and there resuming our westward journey, 
we at once enter a region of surpassing interest, none other than the famous 
land — 

" Where rolls the Oregon." 

Its navigable waters within 450 miles of those of the Missouri river, the 
great Columbia drains an area almost equal in extent to the united area of 
France and Germany. Excluding the portages at the Cascades and Dalles, 
with several less important rapids, the river is navigable to Kettle Falls, 725 
miles from its mouth. These falls, on the upper river, are not accessible by 



38 



THRO UGH WONDERLAND. 



rail, being a considerable distance above the point at which the railroad enters 
its valley. They are said to be more impressive even than the famous Cascades 
on the lower river, there being a perpendicular fall of twenty feet, and then 
swift rapids between rocky banks of quartz and porphyry. It is on the upper 
river, also, that there occur the Little Dalles, where the waters tear through a 
contracted channel with terrific force, constituting, at least at high water, an 
impassable barrier to navigation. 

From Wallula to within a few miles of Portland, a twelve hours' ride, the 
tourist enjoys an uninterrupted succession of views of that superb scenery 




MOUNT HOOD -FROM THE HEAD OF THE DALLES, COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. 

which has given the Columbia river its world-wide reputation. Never for more 
than a few moments does he lose sight of its mighty flood, — now flowing onward 
with all the majesty of the lower Mississippi, and now surging through the 
rocky barriers that impede its course ; here confined within lofty basaltic walls, 
there inclosing numerous beautifully wooded islands ; and here again marked 
by long stretches of bare white sand driven continually by the unceasing winds. 
For some miles west of Wallula the banks of the river are low, and possess no 
special object of interest. It is not, indeed, until he reaches the Great Dalles 
that the tourist sees any indication of the magnificent scenery he is approaching. 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 39 

There, however, he has his first ghmpse of the queenly Mount Hood, 
whose snowy peak, soaring 11,225 feet above the sea, stands out sharply against 
the sky at a distance of thirty-five miles. The Dalles themselves, scarcely 
noticeable, except when the river is at flood, constitute one of the most curious 
and interesting sights in the world,— nothing less than that of the mighty 
Columbia turned on edge. Here, within a gorge so narrow that a child may 
fling a pebble from bank to bank, is confined the greatest river of the Northwest. 
The chasm through which it flows has never been fathomed, and can only be 
approximately determined by an inversion of the grand proportions of the river 
where it flows through its ordinary channel. 

At Dalles City, the eastern terminus of navigation on the middle river, the 
tourist finds himself in an attractive town of nearly forty years' growth. Here 
he may with advantage make a brief stay, resuming his journey either by train 
or by steamer, the fine boats of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company 
plying daily between this city and Portland. From the heights commanding 
the town, magnificent views are to be obtained. Mount Hood looming up in the 
southwest, and Mount Adams, another of the great peaks of the Cascade Range, 
in the north. 

We have now left behind the low-lying shores that extend for so many miles 
between the Dalles and Wallula. Henceforward the scenery increases in inter- 
est every mile, the mountains becoming loftier and more precipitous, the rocky 
shores more rugged, and the intervening foliage more luxuriant. 

It should be stated that the scenery, especially on the .south side of the river, 
appears to much greater advantage when viewed from the deck of a steamer 
than when seen from the train. In consideration of this fact, railway tickets are 
available by steamer without extra charge. The boat leaving the Dalles early 
in the morning, there is a loss of one day involved in taking the steamer on the 
westward journey ; but, returning from Portland, the tourist is able to reach the 
Dalles in time for that day's east-bound train. 

Forty-three miles from the Dalles are the Cascades, where the river changes 
from a placid lake to swift rapids and a foaming torrent. Before the com- 
pletion of the railroad every pound of freight had to be transferred, at this 
point, from a steamer navigating the river above this insurmountable barrier to 
one navigating it below, or vice versd. The railway portage of six miles on the 
Washington side of the river is still operated, and the transfer of such passengers 
as choose to complete their journey by water is made so speedily and conveniently 
as to enhance, rather than otherwise, the pleasure and interest of the river trip. 

In view of the importance of the river as a free commercial highway, Con- 
gress has made several appropriations for the construction, at the Cascades, of 
a system of locks. It is certainly a gigantic undertaking, and many years will 
probably elapse before its completion. 

To a great convulsion of nature, of whose occurrence there is abundant 
evidence, may be traced a singular Indian tradition, that Mount Hood and 
Mount Adams formerly stood close to the river, connected by a natural bridge. 



40 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

The mountains, so goes the story, becoming angry with each other, threw 
out fire, ashes and stones, and so demoHshed the bridge, choking the river, 
which had previously been navigable. The present remoteness of the mountains 
is attributed to the anger of the Great Spirit, who hurled them thus far asunder. 
Both, in common with other peaks of the Cascade Range, are extinct volcanoes; 
and the Indian tradition may have its origin either in some great eruption, or 
in some sudden movement of what is known as the sliding mountain, an im- 
mense mass of basaltic rock gradually wearing its way toward the river. 

After gazing in admiration at the fine scenery surrounding the Cascades, the 
tourist will scarcely be prepared for the announcement that the grandest of all is 
yet to come. But, after leaving Bonneville, not only is the general effect grander 
and more imposing, but the objects of special interest are more numerous. 
Here it is that the advantage of making the trip by steamer is most apparent ; 
for, let the train travel ever so slowly, it is impossible for even the most quick- 
sighted traveler to take in all the points of interest that crowd one upon another. 

On the north side is Castle Rock, rising abruptly from the water's edge a 
thousand feet or more. Farther down the river, also on the north side, is Cape 
Horn, an imposing basaltic cliff projecting into the water. On the south side 
there descend from the lofty perpendicular walls that frown upon the river for 
many miles, numerou-s waterfalls, of indescribable beauty. Here is the lovely 
Oneonta, 600 feet of silver ribbon, floating from the dizzy height. A few 
moments more, and we are opposite the still more beautiful Multnomah Fall, 
which has a descent of no less than 820 feet. At this point the train stops 
fifteen minutes to enable passengers to ascend to the rustic bridge, there to 
enjoy the best possible view of this incomparable fall, and its wondrously 
beautiful setting, contrasting so strikingly with the wild scenery around it. 

At the Pillars of Hercules, two gigantic columns of rock, one on either side 

the track, and forming, as it were, the western gateway to this marvelous 

region, the railroad leaves the river, and runs right on to Portland. The 

steamer continues its course, past the beautiful city of Vancouver, to the 

mouth of the Willamette river, by which great tributary of the Columbia, 

it soon reaches 

PORTLAND. 

Its phenomenal growth, its commanding position on one of the great water- 
ways of the continent, its wealth, commerce and enterprise, and the singular 
natural beauty of its situation, render the capital of the Pacific Northwest one 
of the most attractive cities on the American continent. 

Fifteen years ago Portland contained a population of 1,103. By 1880 the 
construction of the western section of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and the 
approaching completion of the great transcontinental system, had so stimulated 
the growth of the city that its population had increased to 17,577. To-day it 
is estimated at 30,000, or, including the suburbs of East Portland and Albina, at 
40,000, and a handsomer city of its size can not be found in the United States. 

In everything that distinguishes a great metropolitan city, the progress of 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 41 

Portland has been even more remarkable than the rapid growth of its population. 
The handsome business blocks that line its principal streets bear witness to the 
magnitude of its trade and commerce, while its churches, schools and other 
public buildings testify to the high moral tone and refined taste of its' citizens. 

Although one hundred miles from the coast, Portland, like London, Rotter- 
dam and Antwerp, is virtually a seaport, and its growth and progress are based 
upon the solid foundations of its natural advantages. Loading at its wharves, 
or riding at anchor on the broad bosom of the river, may be seen, not only 
river craft of all sorts and sizes, but ocean-going vessels of 3,000 tons. When 
the great wheat crop of Oregon is in course of shipment to Europe, there may 
be seen a fleet of as fine merchantmen as can be found in the world. The 
salmon exports alone, for the year ending August i, 1885, required 120 large 
vessels, having a total capacity of about as many thousand tons. The total 
value of the exports to foreign countries for the year just mentioned, was 
$5,857,057, and that of domestic exports $6,699,776, making a grand total of 
$12,556,833. In addition to several hundred thousand tons of wheat, and the 
120 ship loads of salmon already mentioned, the exports from the Columbia 
river included over eleven million pounds of wool, over two million pounds of 
hides, nearly five and one-half million pounds of hops, and twenty-nine million 
pounds of potatoes. 

Portland is said to number among its merchant princes twenty-one million- 
aires, and certainly there are few cities whose private residences are more 
strikingly indicative of wealth and refinement. The picturesque surroundings 
of the city render it an" exceedingly desirable place of residence. From the sum- 
mit of Robinson's Hill a view that it is no extravagance to pronounce one of the 
finest in the world may be obtained. At one's feet lies the city, nestled in rich 
foliage. Stretching away, for many miles, from where their waters unite in one 
common flood, may be seen the Columbia and Willamette rivers. But above 
all, bounded only by the limits of the horizon, is the great Cascade Range, with 
all its glittering peaks. On the extreme right, seventy-eight miles distant, as 
the crow flies, is seen the snowy crown of Mount Jefferson ; across the river, 
fifty-one miles distant, rises Mount Hood, one of the most beautiful mountains 
on the coast, and the pride and glory of Oregon ; to the northeast stand out 
the crests of Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens, and in the same direction, 
but one hundred miles away, may be descried the great Tacoma, the grandest 
mountain on the Pacific slope. All these five peaks are radiant with eternal 
snow, and it may well be imagined that the effect of the uplifting of their giant 
forms against the clear blue sky is grand in the extreme. 

Tourists coming northward from San Francisco have the choice of two 
routes and two modes of travel. They may either take one of the fine steamers 
of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, sailing every five days, and 
performing the voyage in from sixty to seventy-two hours, or they may travel 
overland by the Oregon & California Railroad, a line that traverses not only 
the most fruitful plains, but also the most beautiful valleys, of this rich State. 



43 



THRO UGH WONDERLAND. 



For the benefit of such travelers, and also in view of the possibility of there 
being those who, both coming and returning by the Northern Pacific Railroad, 
would like to visit the garden of Oregon, and, if possible, obtain a glimpse of 
Mount Shasta, it may not be out of place to give a brief description of the line 
extending southward from Portland to the southern boundary of the State. 

For upward of one hundred miles our route lies along the Willamette 
valley. This is the largest valley in the State, being 150 miles in length, with 
an average width of fifty miles. Inclosed on the east side by the Cascade 
Mountains, and on the west by the Coast Range, it contains an area of about 
four and one-half million acres of rich and beautiful land. Some of the pleas- 
antest towns in the Northwest are to be found in this valley. 

First comes Oregon City, sixteen miles from Portland ; this is the oldest 




^^ 



FLOATING FISH WHEEL, ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. 

town in Oregon. It is situated just below the beauti- 
ful falls of the Willamette, amid highly picturesque 
scenery. Its chief interest for the tourist centres in the 
falls, which represent a force of over a million horse power, or about eight times 
that of the Falls of St. Anthony. They may be seen a few hundred yards south 
of the station, on the west side of the track. Hitherto there has been seen no 
considerable extent of fertile country ; but in Barlow's prairie there appears 
a fine tract of agricultural land inclosed by tributaries of the Willamette. 
Others succeed it, and soon good homesteads, surrounded by shade trees and 
orchards, are seen in every direction. The next town of importance is Salem, 
the State capital, beautifully situated on the sloping banks of the river. The 
capitol, and other State buildings, maybe seen from the train; and the entire 
city, with its broad streets and fine oak groves, presents a pleasing appearance. 
The twenty-eight miles intervening between Salem and Albany afford some 
fine views of the Cascade Range, Mount Hood being visible at a distance of 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 43 

seventy miles, and the nearer southern peaks in still bolder outline. Eugene 
City, 123 miles from Portland, is also charmingly situated and finely laid out 
on the edge of a broad, rich prairie overlooked by a ridge of low hills. Its 
geographical position, at the head of navigation, commands for it the trade of 
a large section of country. It is also the seat of the State University, and is 
otherwise an educational centre of great importance. 

In the course of the next seventy-four miles the railroad ascends about 
2,000 feet to Roseburg, the judicial seat of Douglas county, traversed by 
another of the famous valleys of Oregon, that of the Umpqua. This was 
formerly a great stock country; but its pastures have gradually disappeared 
before the plow, and cattle have given way to grain. It is, moreover, a fine 
fruit growing region. The tourist is now approaching those intricate valleys 
which have made this line of railway from Roseburg to its terminus at Ashland 
at once so costly and so picturesque. 

Cow Creek Canon, so winding that thirty-five miles of track had to be laid 
to attain twelve miles of actual distance, abounds with wild and beautiful 
scenery. From the valley of the Umpqua, the railroad passes into that of the 
Rogue river, in Josephine county. This county is equally famed for its natural 
beauty, its healthful climate and the wonderful productiveness of its soil. 
Grains, fruits and vegetables of every description, yield prodigiously, and their 
quality is not to be surpassed. 

The great attractions of the county for the tourist are the two limestone 
caves situated thirty miles south of Grant's Pass, and fifteen miles east of 
Kerbyville. There is said to be a good wagon road from the latter place to 
within five miles of these caves, and arrangements are in progress for the early 
completion of the road. According to an official publication of the county, 
there is another route, md Williams Creek, by wagon road, to within eight 
miles of the caves, and thence, by a mountain trail, on horseback. The scenery 
along this route is stated to be grand beyond description, embracing many of the 
lovely valleys of this charming county, and, in the distance, the snow-capped 
mountains of the Cascade Range, terminating in the tremendous peak of Mount 
Shasta. The caves themselves consist each of a series of chambers, adorned with 
beautiful stalactites of prismatic colors, and other curious and delicate forma- 
tions, presenting exquisite patterns, and sparkling with the lustre of diamonds. 

At Ashland, 341 miles from Portland, the tourist arrives at the southern 
terminus of the road. Connection is made with the California and Oregon 
Railroad, at Delta, California, by stage. This is an exceedingly enjoyable stage 
ride, the first twenty miles of the journey being over the Siskiyou Mountains, 
from whose summits the long Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range can be traced 
for nearly 200 miles. 

No tourist should return East without first taking a trip down the 

LOWER COLUMBIA 

to Astoria, that city of most interesting historical associations, and no little actual 



44 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



importance .in these stirring days of trade and manufactures. Admirably 
appointed steamers, making fast time, run daily between Portland and Astoria. 
The trip need not, therefore, occupy more than two days. The distance from 
Portland to the point at which the Willamette discharges itself into the Colum- 
bia, is twelve miles, in the course of which opportunity is afforded for observ- 
ing the progress being made by the city in its manufacturing and other 
enterprises. The busy wharves are also passed, and the stately ships riding 
at anchor. 

After the first few miles of the Columbia the tourist may be surprised to find 




MOUNT TACOIVIA. 

that the scenery of the lower river is far from being tame or monotonous. The 
river itself winds considerably for so great a body of water ; the forest, too, is 
luxuriant, and the hillsides are covered with heavy fir ; numerous islands occur 
at intervals, wooded and exceedingly pretty. Where the river has worked its 
way through the Coast Mountains, the scenery, though not so abrupt, stern or 
impressive as that of the middle Columbia, presents many fine effects, the lofty 
walls of the river being surmounted by hills of considerable altitude. 

Not far from Columbia City, on the north or Washington bank of the stream, 
is an island rock known as Mount Coffin, and formerly an Indian place of 
sepulture. Here the tribes deposited the bodies of their noted chiefs and 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 45 

warriors. In his canoe, previously rendered useless, and with his bow and 
arrows, the dead hero was here laid to rest. 

After passing Kalama, the tourist comes upon some of the great canning 
establishments, which before long are passed at such short intervals that they 
seem to line the north bank, on which most of them are situated. 

The fisheries of the Columbia river are almost as famous as its scenery. 
The canning industry, which was first established in 1866, has within the last 
few years attained great importance. Producing the first year some 4,000 cases, 
representing, at the high price they commanded, $16 per case, a total value of 
$64,000, it has steadily increased its product, until now it has reached upward 
of half a million cases. The catch of 1885, which was 524,530 cases, fell short 
of that of 1884 by 132,000 cases, in consequence of the markets of the world 
being temporarily overstocked. It is remarkable that the supply should at all 
exceed the demand, when the gigantic extent of the industry is taken into con- 
sideration. The great perfection to which the methods employed in capturing 
the salmon have been brought, is probably accountable for the recent glut in 
the market. Among the most effective contrivances for the purpose, is the 
floating fish-wheel, by means of which the fish are literally scooped up out of 
the water in shoals. The industry gives employment to 1,500 boats, 3,000 fish- 
ermen, and 1,000 factory hands, the latter principally Chinese. The canning 
season is from April ist to July 31st, when the lower Columbia is alive with 
fishin^g boats, and the canneries are in full operation. 

As we approach Astoria, the river widens out into a broad estuary, some 
seven miles across. Here is Tongue Point, a bold headland running out into 
.the river from the Oregon shore. 

In a beautiful bay between this point and Point Adams, is Astoria, built 
partly on piles, and partly on the shelving hills. For the story of its early 
history, of the arrival of John Jacob Astor's trading ship, " Tonquin," and of its 
subsequent British occupancy, the reader is referred to Washington Irving's 
delightful volume. It is sufficient to say that it is to-day an exceedingly inter- 
esting city to visit, not more on account of its being the oldest British settle- 
ment m the Northwest, and the central figure in the salmon fishing of the 
Columbia river, than for the novelty of its construction. 

Its busy wharves and abundant shipping proclaim it a seaport of consider- 
able importance, requiring only a railroad or the removal of the barriers to the 
navigation of the middle Columbia, to make it a great city. 

Opposite Point Adams is Cape Hancock, formerly known as Cape, Disap- 
pointment. On the sea-coast, both on the Washington side, north of Cape Han- 
cock, and on the Oregon side, south of Point Adams, are various summer 
resorts attracting crowds of visitors during the season. On the Washington 
shore is Ilwaco, beautifully situated on the north shore of Baker's Bay, with 
a long, crescent-shaped beach of fine, white sand sloping to the water, and 
heavily wooded hills in the rear. This growing place, with its hotels, stores, 
church and school house, is rapidly growing in popularity. Steamers meet the 



40 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

Portland boat at Astoria, where passengers are transferred without inconvenience 
or delay. They call, both going and returning, at Cape Hancock, affording 
tourists an opportunity of visiting Fort Canby, and the great light-house, from 
which there is one of the most extensive and magnificent views on the entire 
Pacific coast. On the Oregon shore of the ocean are Clatsop Beach, where 
there are good hotel accommodations and excellent hunting and fishing, and a 
popular resort known as Seaside, boasting a multitude of attractions, including 
a fine ocean beach and a trout creek. Should the tourist be unable to make 
a long stay at any of these places, he ought at least to pay them a brief visit, 
if only to cross the great bar of the river, and to see where its mighty flood 
discharges itself into the ocean at the rate of 1,000,000 gallons per second. 

The climate of this section is exceedingly humid; but its summers are 
delightful. Its rainfall is mostly in winter, when it is both heavy and con- 
tinuous. It is said, that, if a barrel, with the two ends taken out, be placed 
upon its side with the bung-hole uppermost, the rain will enter by that small 
aperture faster than it can run out at the two ends. For this story, however, 
the writer can not vouch, any more than for that of the recent visitor to the 
National Park, who is said to have caught, in one of the lakes of that remark- 
able region, a fish so large that, upon his dragging it ashore, the water of the 

lake fell six inches. 

TO PUGET SOUND. 

The tourist has now beconie more or less familiar with the natural features 
and resources of that great country lying between the Snake river and the 
Pacific Ocean, and between the Columbia river and the Siskiyou Mountains. 

There remains only Western Washington, with its extensive forests, its rich 
coal mmes, its hop gardens, and its far-famed inland sea, on which he is to 
embark on his voyage to the great land of the far North. The Pacific division 
of the Northern Pacific Railroad follows the Willamette river from Portland to 
its confluence with the Columbia, and the latter river from that point to 
Kalama, where trains are conveyed across the river by the finest transfer boat 
in the world, built expressly for the railroad company, and constructed to carry 
thirty cars at one time. From Kalama the track strikes almost directly north- 
ward for Puget Sound, passing through long stretches of dense forest, but also 
intersecting a tract of country containing a larger area of fertile agricultural 
land than is contained in any other county in Western Washington. 

The chief towns of this region are Chehalis and Centralia, and they give 
evidenoe of thrift and prosperity. But the attention of the tourist as he 
travels onward is largely occupied with the magnificent peaks of the Cascade 
Range, whose forms of dazzling whiteness constitute, with their background of 
deepest blue and the dark forests which clothe their base, a picture of marvelous 
beauty. For more than one hundred miles after we leave Portland, there 
looms up behind us the graceful contour of Mount Hood, while to the east are 
seen at intervals the majestic forms of Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. 

But the grandest scene of all is yet to come. After leaving Tenino, there 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



47 



is a revelation of almost unequaled grandeur in the view of Mount Tacoma, 
the loftiest peak of the entire range. If Mount Hood can claim to be consid- 
ered, as is generally admitted, the most graceful and beautiful mountain on the 
Pacific coast, Mount Tacoma can certainly claim to be the most majestic and 
sublime. Towering 14,444 feet above sea-level, and thus exceeding by more 
than 3,000 feet the height of any other mountain in Washington or Oregon, 
it seems to rear its massive head close to the very battlements of heaven. No 
other mountam, even in the Yellowstone National Park or in the main range of 
the Rockies, will have produced so great an impression upon the traveler as will 
the mighty Tacoma. As he gazes at its majestic form, he is inclined to doubt 
whether there is in the whole world one that could establish a better claim to 




universal sovereignty. In lines that will live as long as the English language it- 
self, Byron declared Mont Blanc the monarch of mountains. But Byron never 
saw the matchless Tacoma. It, too, has its throne of rocks, its diadem of snow, 
and, though less frequently than Mont Blanc, its robe of clouds, an adjunct of 
doubtful advantage except in the exigencies of versification. 

Mount Tacoma has, embedded in its mighty bosom, no fewer than fifteen 
glaciers, three of which have been rendered accessible to visitors. Comparing 
them with the glaciers of the Alps, Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, declares that 
the finest effects he witnessed during the course of a long tour in Switzerland, 
fell far short of what he saw on his visit to Mount Tacoma. At the great hotel, 
at Tacoma City, guides and camping outfits are always obtainable. Excursion 



48 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

parties are frequently made up during the summer season, the trip being entirely 
free from difficulty or danger, even to ladies. 

It is at the city of Tacoma that the tourist first looks over the blue waters of 
Puget Sound. This is the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. 
Occupying a commanding position upon a high plateau overlooking Admiralty 
Inlet, Tacoma has an excellent harbor, capable of receiving the largest ocean- 
going vessels. It has also some fine public buildings, among them being the 
Anna Wright Seminary for girls, a monument of the beneficence of Mr. C. B. 
Wright, of Philadelphia. Its luxuriously furnished hotel, the Tacoma, erected 
at a cost of $200,000, occupies one of the finest sites in the world, overlooking, 
as it does, the picturesque shores of the bay, and commanding a magnificent 
view of the imperial mountain. 

A few miles northward is Seattle, also with an excellent harbor, and the 
promise of becoming a city of great importance, an extensive section of rich 
country being naturally tributary to it. 

There is no more delightful climate than that of Puget Sound. The sum- 
mers are cool, the maximum temperature at Tacoma in the summer of 1884 
being eighty-nine degrees, and in that of 1885, eighty-five degrees only. 

The Cascade division of the railroad, extending eastward from Tacoma, is 
developing a very rich bituminous coal country, and great quantities of the 
mineral are being shipped from Tacoma, where immense bunkers have been 
erected to facilitate its exportation. This line also reaches the fine hop growing 
country of the Puyallup valley, whose product has steadily risen in Eastern 
markets, until now it commands as high a price as that of the State of New York. 

But never was the tourist less disposed than now to concern himself with 
agricultural or commercial statistics. With eager expectation, impatient of 
delay, he is hastening toward that veritable Wonderland of J;he World that con- 
stitutes the Mecca of his pilgrimage. He is about to enter upon the final stage 
of his long journey, in that far-famed Inland Passage, whose incomparable 
scenery, extending in one unbroken chain for more than a thousand miles, alone 
surpasses those stupendous works of Nature upon which he has so recently 
gazed. 

John Hyde. 





Alaska aiid the Ixlakd Passage. 




travels for business and pleasure. The former can be 
> ^ easily described, by a slight interpolation in a well- 
known mathematical definition, as "the shortest dis- 
tance and quickest time between two points." The 
latter bears to this mathematical rectilinear exactness 
the relation of the curves, — Hogarth's " line of beauty," 
the rotund circle and graceful sweep of the Archimedean 
spiral, and bends of beauty beyond computation ; and, 
as any of these are more pleasing to the eye than the 
stiff straight line, so any tourist's jaunt is more pleasing 
the senses than the business man's travels. But, as all 
straight lines are alike, and all curves are different, so are their 
equivalents in travel, to which we have alluded. One tourist, 
as a Nimrod, dons his hunting shirt and high-topped boots, and, seeking the 
solemn recesses of the Rockies, slays the grizzly and mountain lion, and thus 
has his " good time ; " another drives through the grand old gorges of the 
Yellowstone Park, and the deep impressions left by a lofty nature are his ample 
rewards ; and yet again, where physical exertion is to be avoided by delicate 
ones or those averse to its peculiarities, one may float down the distant 
Columbia, with its colossal contours, and, without even lifting a finger to aid 
one's progress, view as vast and stupendous scenery as the world can produce. 
Thus each place suits each varying disposition, from the most roystering 
" roughing it," developing the muscles in mighty knots, to where the most 
ponderous panorama of nature may be enjoyed from a moving mansion, as it 
were. Could we conceive a place where all these advantages would be united 
into one, or where one after the other might be indulged at pleasure, we would 
certainly have a tourists' paradise, an ever-to-be-sought and never-to-be-for- 
gotten nook of creation. Such a tour is to be encountered on " the inland 
passage to Alaska," as it is called by those knowing it best. 

In this rough, rocky region. Nature has been prodigal of both land and 
water, — making the former high and picturesque, and the latter deep and navi- 
gable, and running in all directions through the other, apparently for the 

4 . (49) 



50 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

purpose that it might be easily viewed. From the northwest corner of Wash- 
ington Territory, through all of the coast line of British Columbia, and along 
Alaska's shores to the long-cast shadows of Mount St. Elias, stretches for 
nearly two thousand miles a picturesque panorama that seems as if the Yellow- 
stone, the Yosemite, Colorado, and Switzerland and the Alps, were passing in 
review before the spectator ; and, when the greatest northing is gained, Green- 
land and Norway have added their glacier-crowned and iceberg-bearing vistas 
to the view. It looks as if the Yellowstone National Park had sunk into the 
sea until the valleys were waterways, and the feet of the high mountains had 
been converted into shores. A grand salt-water river it is that stretches from 
Puget Sound, itself a beautiful sheet of water, to our distant colony of Alaska, 
a good round thousand miles, and whose waters are as quiet as an Alpine lake, 
even though a fierce gale rage on the broad Pacific outside. 

Beyond the parallel of Sitka, though the grand scenery may be no more 
imposing than that through which the tourist will have passed in coming from 
Washington Territory, he will find some of the curiosities of nature which are 
to be found only in the dreaded frigid zones, — -icebergs and glaciers. Before 
the waters of Northwestern Washington Territory are out of sight, great 
patches of snow are to be seen on the highest of the grand mountains bordering 
the inland passage. These little white blotches in the northern gullies become 
larger and larger as the excursion steamer wends her way northward, until the 
loftiest peaks are crowned with snow. Then, across connecting ridges, they 
join their white mantles ; and, in a few more miles, the blue ice of glaciers 
peeps from out the lower edges of the deep snow. Lower and lower they 
descend as the steamer crawls northward, until the upper parts of the passage 
are essayed, when they have come to the ocean's level, and, plunging into the 
sea, snap off at intervals, and float away as icebergs, some of them higher than 
the masts of the large, commodious steamers that bear tourists to this fairy-land 
of the frigid zones, if one can be allowed such an expression. Glacier Bay, 
which the excursion steamers visit on their summer trips, has a great number of 
these frozen rivers of ice debouching into it ; and its clear, quiet waters, 
reflecting the Alpine scenery of its shores, are ruffled only by the breaking of 
the icebergs from the terminal fronts of the glacier, that send waves across its 
whole breadth, and with a noise like the firing of a sea-coast cannon. Muir 
Glacier is the greatest of this grand group, and surpasses anything nearer than 
the polar zones themselves. There is no use in going into, mathematical meas- 
urements, — its two and three hundred feet in height and its breadth of several 
miles ; for they but feebly represent its grandeur, the deep impressions that fig- 
ures can not measure when viewing this frozen Niagara of the North. Not until 
the blue Adriatic has pierced its way into the heart of the high Alps, or some 
ocean inlet has invaded the valleys of the vast Yellowstone Park, will we ever 
have an equivalent to this display of Nature's noblest efforts in scenic effects. 
Were the other scenery as monotonous as the ceaseless plains, a visit to the 
Alaskan glaciers and icebergs would well repay any one's time and effort ; but. 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 51 

when the tourist travels through the greatest Wonderland of the wide West to 
reach these curious sights, he or she will be paid over and over tenfold. 

So far everything may be seen from the decks of an elegant steamer ; but, 
should the tourist want a little " roughing it," let him stop over in Glacier Bay, 
from one steamer's visit to another, two weeks to a month apart, and clamber 
over the glaciers and row around among the icebergs to his heart's content, and 
until he almost imagines he is an arctic explorer. He will descend from the 
tumbled surface of the frozen seas of ice on the glacier's surface, only to wade 
through grass up to his waist, that waves in the light winds like the pretty pam- 
pas fields of South America. In these fields of grasses he may pitch his tent, 
which, with a cook stove and a month's rations for each person, is all that 
is needed, beyond the baggage of the other tourists. Hunting is found 
in the mountains back of the bay, fish in the waters, and small game in the 
woods near by. 

Or, if longer and rougher jaunts are wanted, ascend the Lynn Channel, and 
then the Chilkat, or Chilkoot, Inlet, hiring two or three Indians to carry one's 
camping effects on their backs to the lakes at the source of the great Yukon 
river of the British Northwest Territory and Alaska, — the third river of Amer- 
ica. Going by the Chilkoot trail, over the Alaskan coast range of mountains, 
which will furnish Alpine climbing enough to suit the most eager, on snow and 
glacier ice, one comes to a series of lakes aggregating 150 miles in extent ; 
and along these he may paddle and return, shooting an occasional brown 
or black bear, moose, caribou or mountain goat, while aquatic life is every- 
where on these pretty Alpine lakes. 

Throughout the whole inland passage, one is passing now and then some 
Indian village, of more or less imposing appearance and numbers. In Alaska 
they all belong to a single great tribe, the T'linkit, bound together by a com- 
mon language, but by no stronger ties, for each village, or cluster of villages, 
makes a sub-tribe, having no sympathies with the other, and they often war 
against one another. 

It is not often that one would want to call a tourist's attention to an Indian 
village, for the average encampment or habitation of the "noble red man" is 
not the most attractive sight or study ; but, in the T'linkit towns, we have no 
such hesitation, for, in the curiosities to be seen in their houses and surround- 
ings, they are certainly one of the strangest people on earth. They are the 
artistic savages of the world. In front of each log house, and often rearing its 
head much higher than it by two or three fold, are one or two posts, called 
"totem poles," which are merely logs on end; but, on the seaward face, the 
savage sculptor has exhausted all the resources of his barbaric imagination 
in cutting in hideous faces and figures, that, with a hundred or so such terrible 
" totems " in front of a village, makes one think of some nightmare of his 
childish days. The houses, too, are carved inside and out. Every utensil they 
have is sculptured deep with diabolical but well executed designs, and their 
spoons of mountain sheep and goat horn are marvels of savage work. All 



52 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

these are for sale to tourists, and every excursion steamer brings numbers of 
tiiese romantic remembrances of a yet more romantic journey back to civili- 
zation. 

But the inland passage to Alaska is not the only grand and picturesque part 
of that great territory visited by the excursion steamers ; for beyond and as far 
as Mount St. Elias, they often sail to this the greatest cluster of high mountains 
on the Western Contineat, — ^Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high ; and Fairweather 
and Crillon, a third taller ; then beyond, Cook and Vancouver cluster near 
sublime St. Elias, nearly 20,000 feet above the ocean that thunders at its base, 
and whose jagged top may be seen a hundred and fifty miles to sea. How 
disappointing are the Colorado peaks of 12,000 and 14,000 feet to one, for the 
simple reason that they spring from a plain already 6,000 to 8,000 feet above 
sea-level, and seem, as they are, but high hills on a high plateau. How like 
pygmies they appear to Hood, Tacoma, Shasta, and others not so high above the 
ocean base line, but whose nearly every foot above sea-level is in mountain 
slope. How grand, then, must be hoary-headed St. Elias, whose waist is the 
waters of the wide sea, and whose 20,000 feet above sea-level springs from the 
Pacific Ocean, from whose calm waters we view its majestic height. 

But let us commence at the starting point of our journey, and take our read- 
ers step by step over the whole route. 

For many years the people of our great Northwest country, Oregon, Wash- 
ington and Idaho Territories, have spoken familiarly of " the Sound " as one of 
their great geographical features, — in much the same way as the people of 
Southern Connecticut or Long Island speak of "the Sound," — referring 
thereby to Puget Sound, that cuts deep into the northwestern corner of Wash- 
ington Territory. Many have visited it, and sailed on its beautiful waters ; 
beautiful enough in themselves or their own immediate surroundings, but thrice 
grand and gorgeous in their silver framing of snow-clad peaks and mountain 
ranges, surrounding them on all sides. The long, narrow, picturesque sound, that 
looked not unlike a Greenland fjord, or close-walled bay at the mouth of some 
grand river, — one of those bays so slowly converging that a person can hardly 
define where it ceases and the river commences,— was considered one of the 
most beautiful and scenic places of the Northwest ; and its people delighted to 
show it to strangers, with its enhancing surroundings, reaching from the pret- 
tily situated capital of the Territory, Olympia, at the head of "the sound," to 
where the broad Juan de Fuca Strait leads to the great Pacific Sea. Then 
Alaska was known only as Russian America, when it was spoken of at all, so 
seldom was it heard, and seemed to be as far away from the United States on 
that side of the continent, and as little thought of, as Greenland or Iceland is 
to-day with our people of the Atlantic coast. An occasional Hudson's Bay 
Company trading boat steamed out of Victoria harbor, and disappeared north- 
ward, crawling through a maze of intricate inland channels and Alpine-like 
waterways to some distant and seemingly half-mythical trading post of that 
lonesome land ; but, as to anything definite as to where she was going, as little 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 53 

was known by the people as if an arctic expedition was leaving the harbor of 
New York or Boston, and not one hundredth of the furor was made about 
the departure, if, in fact, any notice was taken of it at all. With the accession 
of Alaska, through the efforts of Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, the 
discovery of the Cassiar mines, in British Columbia, but which must be reached 
through Alaska, and a few other minor incentives, set many people to looking 
northward ; they then found that they could continue their trips on a long 
inland salt-water river, of which the well-known Puget Sound was but a small 
part, — hardly the equivalent of Narragansett Bay taken from Long Island 
Sound, or Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Not that these were the first 
explorations and discoveries of importance in the inland passage and its sur- 
rounding woods and waters, by any manner of means. Cook and Clerke, as 
early as 1776 ; Dixon, from 1785 to 1788 ; Langsdorff, in 1803-8 ; La Perouse, 
in 1785-88 ; Lisianski, from 1803 to 1806; Meares, of the Royal navy, from 
1788 to 1789 ; and especially Vancouver, from 1790 to 1795, — had all peeped into 
this part of the country, and many of the explorations and surveys were of the 
most extended nature ; but, at about the time of which I speak, the knowledge of 
the inland passage to the bulk of the people, even in these parts so near to it, was 
nearly as musty as the old volumes on the library shelves that gave the most 
information. In fact, but little knowledge or interest was to be found regard- 
ing these parts. Their history of development from that embryonic state 
where everything told is regarded as bordering on the mythical, to where a 
line of ocean steamers visits them with crowded passenger lists, is the usual his- 
tory of such developments. 

The inland passage to Alaska may be said to practically extend from 
Tacoma, in Washington Territory, at the head of Puget Sound, to Chilkat, 
Alaska, at the head of Lynn Channel, a distance of nearly 1,100 miles, where 
the tourist taking a sea voyage has high shores in close proximity on either 
side of him, except a few places here and there, where a short communication 
with the ocean outside is to be had. But this " inland passage," so called, is 
not the only one leading between the points named. It is, rather, a Broadway 
in New York City, a Pennsylvania avenue in Washington, State street in 
Chicago, — i. e., the main way ; but every few miles a vessel could turn off down 
another passage as readily as a pedestrian or vehicle could down a side street, 
and, continuing a short way, return to the main thoroughfare again. Probably 
all the channels and straits and sounds and inlets in this part of Alaska, 
British Columbia and Washington Territory, susceptible of navigation by fair- 
sized ocean and river steamers, and all of them connecting with each other in a 
perfect network of waterways, would, if placed end to end, reach from a quarter 
to a third of the way around the world. Many of them are so illy charted — or 
not charted at all — that no craft of value would trust herself to follow their 
courses, while some of the smaller ways, but probably none the less pictur- 
esque, have yet to bear the first white man on their bosom. The most 
picturesque of all the ways through this intricacy of picturesque channels has 



54 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

been selected, carefully surveyed, and experienced pilots conduct the vessels to 
and from Alaska on its waters. The whole length of the passage is heavily 
timbered with various kinds of pine, fir, hemlock, cedar and spruce. Here and 
there avalanches from the mountain tops have swept through the dense timber, 
like a sickle through so much grain ; and, although in a few years the growth is 
restored, yet the varying shades of green in the old and new growth of trees, 
running in perpendicular stripes up the steep hillsides, plainly show the ancient 
and recent devastations. Prettily situated Indian villages dot the narrow, 
shelving shores at rare intervals along the passage ; and, when these nomads of 
the Northwest are seen, which is not infrequent, the chances are more than 
likely that it will be in a canoe, where they spend two-thirds of their out-of- 
door life. 

Says the "American Cyclopaedia," speaking of this interesting part of Wash- 
ington Territory, the southern part of the inland passage : " Washington 
Territory possesses a great multitude of harbors, perhaps more than any other 
country of equal extent on the globe. Puget Sound, which has an average 
width of two miles, never less than one nor more than four, and a depth never 
less than eight fathoms, runs loo miles inland in a southward direction from 
the Straits of Fuca ; and Hood's Canal, twelve miles further west, with half 
the width, runs in the same general direction about 60 miles. These two 
great estuaries, or arms of tidewater, have depth sufficient for the largest 
vessels, and numerous bends and corners where the most perfect protection 
may be found against the winds." Captain Wilkes, in the report of his famous 
exploring expedition, writes of Puget Sound : " I venture nothing in saying 
there is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these." The 
Coast Range and Cascade Range of mountains are plainly visible from the 
sound. Near the Columbia river the Coast Range is not very high ; but west of 
Hood's Canal it rises, in abrupt, beetling ridges, 7,000 to 9,000 feet high, called 
the Olympian Mountains, many of the peaks being snow-crowned throughout 
the year. The Cascade Range fairly bristles with snow-clad peaks from 8,000 
to over 14,000 feet in height, and in every direction, almost, may be seen the 
grandest Alpine scenery in the distance. 

Steaming northward through Puget Sound from Tacoma, with Seattle 
and other towns upon our right, and Port Townsend, the port of entry to 
the sound, upon our left, we come to Juan de Fuca Strait, which would lead 
us to the Pacific Ocean were we to follow it out. It is the most southern of all 
the waterways that connect the great sea with the network of channels inside, 
and formerly was much used as a part of the route to Alaska or Puget Sound 
from Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco, California ; the steamer putting out to 
sea for a day if from the former port, and for four or five if from the latter, the 
passengers having all the discomforts of a sea voyage for that time. Where 
Magellan sailed over the Pacific Ocean it well deserved the name ; but along the 
rough northern coast the amount of stormy weather increases, and a voyage on 
this part of the Pacific is not always calculated to impress one with the appro- 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 55 

priateness of the great ocean's name. The construction of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad from the Columbia river to Puget Sound has made these sea voyages 
unnecessary to reach a port on the inland passage ; and, unless a person's 
stomach is built on "nautical lines," so that he really enjoys an ocean trip, he 
can save this discomfort by a cut across lots on a railroad train. In fact, it 
must be kept in mind, that, while the trip on the inland passage is an ocean 
voyage, equal to one from New York City to Havana and return, it is, as far as 
sea-sickness is concerned, as if the Hudson river was turned around in the 
opposite direction, and we sailed on its waters from New York to Havana and 
return ; while the inland passage, in its southern part, is as accessible by rail- 
road travel, to the people of the United States and Canada, as any point on the 
Hudson river. Therefore, broad Juan de Fuca Strait, where the pulsations of 
the ocean's life outside are even felt to its eastern end, in much diminished 
waves, however, carries fewer persons than formerly, and especially of that 
reluctant class who look uncomplainingly at the terrors of the sea, from the basis 
of dire necessity. 

Crossing this strait, which has led to so many controversies as to whether the 
old Greek from whom it is named actually discovered this beautiful body of water, 
or only made a lucky guess in publishing to the world a mythical journey of 
his, we sight and 'bear down on the beautiful British island of Vancouver, 
whose metropolis is Victoria, and alongside of whose docks we shall soon be 
made fast. 

Victoria, the city, was built on the site of old Fort Victoria, a Hudson Bay 
Company trading post of that great British monopoly that held nearly all 
British America under its control for two hundred years, and, although broken 
as a monopoly, has yet an influence to assist or retard the development of the 
country which is incalculable. The Fraser river gold mine excitement in the 
'50's did much to build up Victoria, and send it forward into the front rank of 
Pacific coast cities, a position which she has held with varying fortunes, 
though now, in common with the whole Northwest, once more on the 
ascending wave. 

Cities, like individuals, have their "hobbies," although seldom so prom- 
inently marked; and the municipal "hobby" of Victoria is her splendidly 
constructed roads, leading through the town and far beyond the suburbs, and 
in which she has no superior on the Pacific coast of North America, and but 
few in the world. If the steamer remains long enough in the harbor, — and 
during excursion times in the summer months they always do, — a drive should 
be taken on the Victoria roads, and especially the one leading to Esquimalt 
harbor and return, some two or three miles in all. It is but one, however, of 
the many beautiful drives ; but it is only necessary to mention them in a general 
way for any one who would desire to test them, so readily can all needed 
information be found on the spot. 

In quaint little smoke-stained and dingy-looking stores in out-of-the-way 
nooks and corners of the streets are to be found the Victorian curiosity shops, 



5t3 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

crowded with relics of the fast-disappearing Indian tribes that once formed a 
much denser population in this part of the country than at present. Pretty 
little mats and baskets are made from the sea-grass, dyed with the juices from 
berries and other natural dyes, and sold for the merest trifles. Curiously carved 
steatite houses, in miniature imitation of the Indian dwellings, and "totem 
poles " made by the Hydah or Haida Indians, are to be seen for sale. Some- 
times they carve plaques with spread-eagles and other fanciful designs upon 
them ; rude but serviceable mats from the inner bark of the cedar tree, and all 
the known — and unknown — knick-knacks that can come from the barbaric inge- 
nuity of Indian art, and which would require a pamphlet larger than the one in 
the reader's hands to chronicle half. This is the beginning of such curious 
wares that will be temptingly displayed before the tourist at every town and 
stopping place on the route, and from which may be selected such mementoes 
of the journey as will please the individual fancy. 

Says a writer in the Overland Alonth/y, the Century Magazine of the 
Pacific coast: "Victoria, in a rock-bound and land-protected cove, is the most 
attractive and the largest city on Vancouver's Island. During the days of the 
Fraser river excitement, Victoria was a much more energetic city than it is 
to-day. There were exciting times there then, and, because of the great expec- 
tations which everybody indulged in, land was bid up to an enormously high 
figure, and the town's prospects were considered wonderfully brilliant. But the 
Fraser was a fraud, comparatively, and its mines were quickly exhausted, so that 
Victoria received a setback, from which it is only just recovering. It is a pic- 
turesque town, thoroughly English, staid and conservative, and its location is 
an enviable one. In the distance rise the blue-hued heights of the Vancouver 
ranges, and nearer at hand lie the waters of Fuca Straits ; beyond which there 
can be seen the snowy peaks of the Washington Territory mountains. Round- 
ing the long point of land which juts out into the sea to form Victoria harbor, 
the town lay all revealed to us at last. In one direction were red painted shops 
set upon a high bluff overlooking the bay, and eastward there were green fields 
and trimly built cottages. 

" ' Coming ashore? ' we were asked at length. 

" ' Not to-day,' the artist said. 

" ' Then, don't judge Victoria until you see the place,' came the word from 
the dock. 

" We promised, and said that when homeward bound we would make a call." 

Returning, the narrator continues, " On the wharf at Victoria stood our 
friend of a month ago. 

" ' Coming ashore ? ' he said, when he saw us. 

"'Yes.' 

" ' Good, we can show you a pretty town. Disappointed in Alaska ? ' 

" ' No; it's the grandest country for scenery I — ' began the artist. 

"'Yes, yes, I know,' said our friend, interrupting him. 'Big glaciers, fine 
sailing, curious sights, no sea-sickness. Same old story; hear it every trip.' 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 57 

"Victoria is picturesque in every detail," continues the narrator. "The 
land faces a land-locked bay, and behind the place stretch dense forests, 
through which roadways extend to the various suburbs. During our stay the 
frosts of early fall began to color the leaves, and at night the air grew sharp 
and chill. But still the air was clear, and down in the harbor white-winged 
yachts still moved over the bluish waters." 

Vancouver Island, which forms the outlying barrier to, or seaward side of, 
the inland passage from Juan de Fuca Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound, is one 
of the largest islands in that vast archipelago which forms the passage, and is 
the largest under British dominion. It was called Quadra Island by the Span- 
iards, who held it by descent from Mexico (then a Spanish colony) until the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, when Vancouver, of the Royal navy, was 
sent from England to receive its surrender from the Spanish ; it having been 
ordered by the home government at Madrid, — which he did from the Castilian 
governor, Quadra. Vancouver called it Quadra and Vancouver's Island ; but 
the Spanish title has slowly disappeared under British rule. Vancouver pushed 
his discoveries from here to Cook's Inlet during his two or three years' cruise 
on this coast, and many of the names in the inland passage and adjacent lands 
and waters are due to his explorations made nearly a hundred years ago. 

Leaving Victoria and its picturesque surroundings behind us, we swing in a 
huge circle around the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island, until we are 
pointed northward once more. 

Strictly speaking, "the inland passage to Alaska, as defined by nautical 
men, now begins, Puget Sound only belonging to it in a geographical sense, 
but as similar thereto as 'peas in a pod.'" We shortly after pass 
through a congerie of pretty islands, like the Thousand Islands of the St Law- 
rence on a greatly magnified scale, when we come to the Gulf of Georgia, one 
of the widest portions of the inland passage. The islands we have left to the 
right (although it may change by the pilot not taking the usual route, so many 
are they to choose from) are the San Juan Islands, of far more importance than 
one would believe, looking at the unpopulated shores ; at least, they were so in 
1856, when the United States and Great Britain came very near coming to 
national blows about their possession. The matter was finally left to arbitra- 
tion in the hands of the Emperor of Brazil, and then transferred to the present 
Emperor of Germany, who awarded them to the United States. The British 
troops then withdrew, a post of them having been on one end of the large island, 
with an American post on the other. 

As we steam through the Gulf of Georgia we leave the highest point (Point 
Roberts) of the United States off to our right, in the distance, on the forty- 
ninth parallel. 

Some forty or fifty miles farther on, and we enter the first typical waters 
of the inland passage, — Discovery Passage, — a narrow waterway between high, 
mountainous banks ; a great salt-water, river-like channel, about a mile in 
breadth, and twenty-three and a half miles long by the British Admiralty 



58 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

charts. A huge yellow bluff, projecting into the sea, greets the eye as the 
passage is approached, and the great, wide channel to the east is the one 
the tourist has selected as a matter of course for the steamer to pursue; but 
she agreeably disappoints him, and enters the narrow, picturesque way. This 
Discovery Passage is a Yankee "find," having first been entered by a Bos- 
ton sloop, the "Washington," in 1789. The broad right-hand passage could 
have been taken, as the land to our right is an island (of which the yellow 
clay bluff is the southern cape), called Valdez Island after an ancient mari- 
ner who visited this part of the world in 1792, in the Spanish galleon "Mex- 
icana." At first one is slightly nonplused at the frequency of Spanish names 
in these quarters ; but, as the early history of the country is closely searched, 
the conclusion is forced on one more and more that these old Castilian nav- 
igators have not even got their dues, and, where their names once formed 
an honorable majority, they have slowly disappeared before the constant 
revisions of the geographers and hydrographers of another people, who have 
since acquired possession. AVe will come to many such changes of nomen- 
clature on our interesting trip. 

About two miles from the entrance to Discovery Passage we come to the 
Indian Village of Yaculta, on Valdez Island. It is the first of many we will see 
before we return to Victoria again, and, like most of them, it is on one of 
the narrow, level places between the high hills and the deep sea that happens 
here and there in this Alpine country ; or its inhabitants would have to live in 
the trees on the steep hillsides, or in their canoes on the water. The large river 
coming in from the Vancouver Island side, some five or six miles from the 
entrance to the passage, is Campbell river, and is navigable for some distance 
inland by boats and canoes. 

About half way through Discovery Passage we come to the Seymour 
Narrows, a contracted channel of the passage, about two miles long, and 
not much over one-fourth the previous width, where the tides rush through 
with the velocity of the swiftest rivers (said to be nine knots at spring- 
tides), a current which is so strong that it is generally calculated upon 
in departing from Victoria so as to reach this point about slack water. In 
the narrows is a submerged rock, with the pretty-sounding alliterative title 
of Ripple Rock, on which the United States man-of-war "Saranac" was 
lost in the summer of 1875. Ripple Rock is now so well marked that it 
is no longer dangerous to navigation. Northward from the narrows the 
hills rise in bold gradients, making the change quite noticeable, and more 
picturesque. 

Chatham Point marks the northern entrance to Discovery Passage, and here 
the tourist apparently sees the inland passage bearing off slightly to the east 
from this cape, when, with a sudden swerve to the westward, the ship swings 
around at full right angles to her original course, and enters a channel which a 
minute before seemed to be but a bay on the west side of the original water- 
way. The new channel is Johnstone Strait, and is over twice as long as Dis- 




SCENES IN THE INLAND PASSAGE. 
From Schwatka's "Along Alaska's Great River," Cassell & Co., New York, Publisher 



(59) 



CO THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

covery Passage, that we have just left ; or, to be more exact, about fifty-five miles 
in length. The shores are now getting truly mountainous in character, ridges 
and peaks on the south side bearing snow throughout the summer on their 
summits, 4,000 to 5,000 feet high, and the pilot will tell you that the waters on 
which you are sailing correspond in their dimensions, in many places 100 to 
150 fathoms of line failing to reach bottom. The rough and rugged islands 
which we pass to our right, about three or four miles beyond Chatham Point, 
are the Pender Islands. The high mountains to the left and front are the 
Prince of Wales range. About fifteen to twenty miles after entering John- 
stone Strait, a conspicuous valley is seen on Vancouver Island, the only break 
in the high mountain range on that side. It is the valley of a stream called 
Salmon river, named from that delicious fish, which here abound, and in the 
pursuit of which the Indians have shown this stream to be navigable for canoes 
for a number of miles inland. A conspicuous conical hill, probably a thousand 
feet high, rises in the valley and marks it to the traveler. Just beyond Salmon 
river's mouth, some three miles, the strait widens, another joining it from the 
north. The mountains to our left are now the New Castle range, Mount 
Palmerston attaining the height of 5,000 feet. At the northern end of John- 
stone Strait we have a number of channels to choose from, — Blackfish Sound, 
Weynton Passage, Race Passage and Broughton Strait, the longest of all, and 
only fifteen miles in length, which we take. All these channels simply indicate 
that there is a cluster of islands where Johnstone Strait swells out into Queen 
Charlotte Sound, which we enter as Broughton Strait is left behind, and that as 
we select between different islands we take a different-named channel. These 
particular islands are the Malcolm Islands, sometimes confined in its applica- 
tion to the largest island. About half way through the Broughton Strait comes 
in the Nimpkish river from the Vancouver side. Mount Holdsworth \z the 
high, conical peak we see to the south from here. At the mouth of the river is 
the Indian village of Cheslakee. It is said that an ascent of this river reveals 
the most picturesque scenery in lakes and falls, a saying to which all the 
surroundings in the inland passage itself, at this point, would give the most 
ample corroboration. Directly north from the river's mouth is Cormorant 
Island, which we leave to our right; and the bay in its side is Alert Bay, where 
exist a salmon cannery, an Indian mission, a wharf at which ships can land, and 
other signs of civilization. 

Queen Charlotte Sound is one of the few openings to the Pacific Ocean. It 
is about fifty miles long, and, in some places, nearly half as wide, and looks like 
getting out to sea after having passed through the narrow channels just left 
behind. It was entered and named by Wedgeborough in the summer of 1786 ; 
so those visitors of 1886 to its grand waters may celebrate its centennial, and 
drink a toast to Queen Charlotte, the queen of King George III., and queen for 
fifty-seven years. About nine or ten miles on its waters, and to our left, is Fort 
Rupert, a Hudson Bay Company's trading post, with a large Indian village 
clustered around it. Here fruits and vegetables are grown for the local 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 61 

demand. About half way through Queen Charlotte Sound, and we pass 
through a narrow channel, twenty-two miles long, named Goletas Channel. 
Emerging from it, we leave Cape Commerell on our left side, and bid good-bye 
to Vancouver Island, for this is its northernmost cape. Near the exit from 
Goletas Channel, but by another passage, now seldom used, is where the United 
States man-of-war *' Suwanee " was wrecked, on a submerged rock, in July, 1869, 
when the inland passage was not so well known by pilots as it is now. We can 
now look out to sea toward the Pacific Ocean ; but a short journey plunges us 
into one of the many passages ahead of us, the smallest, or one nearest the 
mainland, being taken, called Fitzhugh Sound. It was named in 1786 by 
Captain Hanna, is about forty miles long, and with a width of about three miles. 
The first island to our left on entering is Calvert Island. About ten miles 
from its southern cape is an indentation in the island, called Safety Cove or 
Port Safety, probably a mile deep. It was while delayed in this picturesque 
little harbor, in 1885, that Mr. Charles Hallock, the well-known author on 
piscatorial pursuits, penned the following lines, descriptive of the inland pas- 
sage, which we find in the American Angler of September, 1885: 

" The mainland is flanked throughout nearly its entire extent by a belt of 
islands, of which the majority are sea-girt mountains. Of course, throughout 
this extended coast-line there are many islands of many different phases, — some 
of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors 
in a storm ; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir ; and 
others, still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Most aptly 
has this wave-washed region been termed an archipelago of mountains and 
land-locked seas. Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels 
which seem to have no outlets ; strainmg the neck to scan the tops of snow- 
capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor ; 
watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and herds of sea-lions, 
which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they enclosed by 
the shadowy hills, — one seems, indeed, in a new creation, and watches the strange 
forms around him with an intensity of interest which almost amounts to awe. 

"In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or 
gravelly shores. All the margins of mainland and islands drop down plump 
into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow 
weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and 
barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. * * 
* * * When the tide sets in, great rafts of algae, with stems fifty feet 
long, career along the surface ; millions of jelly-fish and anemones crowded as 
closely as the stars in the firmament ; great air-bulbs, with streamers floating 
like the long hair of female corpses ; schools of porpoises and fin-back whale 
rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam ; all sorts of marine 
and Mediterranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. 
Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content 
or run about feeding- 



62 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

" Here and there along the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the 
melting snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy waterfalls 
from heights that are higher than the Yosemite. From the canons which divide 
the foot-hills, cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are 
choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I could catch them 
with my hands as long as my strength endured, so helpless and infatuated are 
these creatures of predestination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there 
are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson spots as large as a 
pea ; and the rainbow trout, with his iridescent lateral stripe ; and his cousin ger- 
main, the 'cut-throat trout,' slashed with carmine under the gills. And there 
is another trout, most familiar to the eye in Eastern waters, and doubly welcome 
to the sight in this far-off region — the Salvelinus Canadensis^ or 'sea-trout,' 
which I have recognized these many years as a separate species. * * * 
Here he is in his garniture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up-stream 
neighbors of New England and the Provinces. * * 

"The seas are full of strange species. Here the family Percidce is regnant 
and supreme among the food fishes. The number of species and varieties is 
remarkable. Here are the Enibiotoctdce, or viviparous perch, which bring forth 
their young in litters, like cats or dogs, to the number of eight to forty at a 
time. There are no less than seventeen known varieties of them. Here, also, 
are at least fifteen varieties of Scorpceiiidce, all fine table fish, which are locally 
known as rock-cod, groupers and snappers, but having no close relations at all 
to the family of Gadidce. I send herewith the differential characteristics of 
four of them taken near our present berth, in latitude 51 degrees 30 minutes. 
The scarlet snapper seems very closely allied to the Lutjanus Blackfordi of 
Eastern Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, from which he could scarcely be dis- 
tinguished in appearance. The others are all fish of brilliant colors. No. 2 
can scarcely be distinguished from the fresh-water bass of the lakes lying west 
of the Mississippi, — the AIicropterits,—€\\.\v^x in form, fin system or color. At 
Sitka I found a fish of exactly the same shape, but black as a sea-bass of the 
Atlantic (Centropristis atrariits). No. 4 belongs, I believe, to the family of 
Chiridcp, and is locally known as a sea-trout. * * * These fish 
take salmon roe, clams, sand-worms, crabs, meat and cut-fish bait. The black 
bass of Sitka is taken alongshore with a trolling spoon. * * * The. 
other fish were taken chiefly in thirty fathoms of water on the young flood tide. 

" Besides these fish, we have taken halibut, two kinds of flounder, skates, dog- 
fish of several kinds and strange shapes, sharks, sculpins, etc.; some of the 
sculpins were beautifully marked in blue, red and brown. * * _[ h^ve 
had several of the species painted in oil, and will forward them to the Smith- 
sonian, with descriptions." 

But let us leave this piscatorial paradise, as painted by one who is an artist 
in his line, and wend our way through the forty miles of Fitzhugh Sound. Then 
comes Lama Passage, contracted, winding and picturesque, about fourteen or 
fifteen miles long. About half way through we pass very near the Indian 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 63 

village of Bella-Bella, and which is also a Hudson Bay Company trading post. 
The Bella-Bellas were once a large tribe living in these parts ; but the little 
village, of about twenty Indian houses, that the tourist passes on his left, repre- 
sents the greater portion of the tribe at present, and gives one a practical and 
forcible illustration of the disappearance of "the noble red man." A mission 
residence and a church, with the cattle on the cleared hills, give the place quite 
a civilized aspect. After Lama Passage comes Seaforth Channel, just as wind- 
ing and pretty ; the swingings to the right and left, in places where the passage 
is apparently right ahead, increase your respect for the pilot, and you wonder, 
in all these intricacies, like Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, " how one small 
head could carry all he knew." At Milbank Sound we look out to sea for a 
brief half-hour, and then plunge into Finlayson Channel, a typical waterway of 
the inland passage, like a great river. The sides are very high mountains, 
densely timbered nearly to the top, where snow exists the year round, forming 
a base of supplies for the beautiful waterfalls that dash down the precipitous 
heights, like silvery columns, on a deep green background. It is said that all the 
little streams of this region swarm with salmon, giving the Indians a most boun- 
tiful supply. Then comes Graham Reach, about twenty miles long ; then Fraser 
Reach, of ten miles ; and McKay Reach, of seven, — that could all have been 
given a single name, and much trouble have been saved. A little, irregular sheet 
of water, called Wright Sound, and Grenville Channel, " as straight as an 
arrow," gives us nearly fifty miles of rectilinear sailing. 

We are now getting far enough north to make the sight of snow a familiar 
one, and the dense timber is striped with perpendicular windrows, where large 
avalanches have cut their way through them in the winter, when the snow falls 
heavily in these parts. Chatham Sound is the last channel we essay in British 
domain, and a royal old sheet of water it is, with a width of nearly ten miles, and 
about three or four times as long. After about three hours on its bosom a 
great channel is opened east and west before us, on which the swells from the 
broad Pacific enter. This is Dixon Entrance, and the boundary between British 
Columbia and Alaska beyond, whose blue mountains we see in the distance. 
The islands still continue ; and the number, in this part of Alaska alone, has 
been estimated at eleven hundred, and this, too, excludes the rocks and islets. 
Clarence Strait is the main channel as soon as Alaskan waters are entered; but 
there are others on both sides of it which may be taken. It is a little over a 
hundred miles long, and somewhat variable in its width. It was named by Van- 
couver, nearly a hundred years ago, after the Duke of Clarence. From Clarence 
Strait we enter Stickeen Strait ; for most of the steamers call at Wrangell, and 
this bends us off of our course. 

Wrangell is a tumble-down, dilapidated-looking town, in a most beautifully 
picturesque situation, and the first impression is to make one ashamed of the 
displays of the human race compared with those of nature. It is the port to 
the Cassiar mines ; or, better speaking, it was, for they have seen their palmiest 
days, a fact which is quite evident on looking at their dependency, the town of 



64 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

Wrangell. The Cassiar mines are in British Columbia, and to reach them the 
Stickeen river, emptying near Wrangell, must be ascended, itself a most pic- 
turesque stream, and one well worth visiting if the tourist can catch one of the 
little boats that yet occasionally depart from Wrangell to ascend the rushing, 
impetuous river. Says one writer of it, in the Philadelphia Dispatch : " The 
Stickeen is navigable for small steamers to Glenora, one hundred and fifty miles, 
flowing first in a general westerly direction, through grassy, undulating plains, 
darkened here and there with patches of evergreens ; then, curving southward, 
and receiving numerous tributaries from the north, it enters the Coast Range, and 
sweeps across it to the sea through a Yosemite valley more than a hundred miles 
long, and one to three miles wide at the bottom, and from five thousand to eight 
thousand feet deep, marvelously beautiful and inspiring from end to end. To the 
appreciative tourist, sailing up the river through the midst of it all, the canon, for 
a distance of one hundred and ten miles, is a gallery of sublime pictures, — an 
unbroken series of majestic mountains, glaciers, falls, cascades, forests, groves, 
flowery garden spots, grassy meadows in endless variety of form and composition, 
— furniture enough for a dozen Yosemites ! while, back of the walls, and thou- 
sands of feet above them, innumerable peaks and spires and domes of ice and 
snow tower grandly into the sky. About fifteen miles above the mouth of the river 
you come to the first of the great glaciers, pouring down through the forest in 
a shattered ice-cascade nearly to the level of the river. Twelve miles above 
this point a noble view is opened along the Skoot river canon — a group of 
glacier-laden Alps, from ten thousand to twelve thousand feet high. Thirty- 
five miles above the mouth of the river the most striking object of all comes in 
sight ; this is the lower expansion of the great glacier, measuring about six 
miles around the ' snout,' pushed boldly forward into the middle of the valley 
among the trees, while its sources are mostly hidden. It takes its rise in the 
heart of the range, some thirty or (orty miles away. Compared with this, the 
Swiss vier de glace is a small thing. It is called the ' Ice Mountain.' The 
front of the snout is three hundred feet high, but rises rapidly back for a few 
miles to a height of about one thousand feet. Seen through gaps in the trees 
growing on one of its terminal moraines, as one sails slowly along against the 
current, the marvelous beauty of the chasms and clustered pinnacles shows to 
fine advantage in the sunshine." 

Wrangell's log-cabin backwoods stores are good places to search for Indian 
relics, the Stickeen Indians living in the vicinity being the most prolific in the 
manufacture of these savage curios. Leaving Wrangell, a westward-trending 
strait (Sumner Strait, after Senator Sumner) of forty or fifty miles carries us 
directly out to the Pacific Ocean ; but an hour's run finds us turning into 
another passage, — Chatham Strait, — one of the largest of the almost innumer- 
able channels of the inland passage, and which pomts squarely to the north. 
It is nearly one hundred and fifty miles long, and about five or six miles 
wide. It was named by Vancouver, about the end of last century, after the 
then Earl of Chatham, and is a most noble sheet of water. 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 65 

Formerly the pilots used to go around Cape Ommane}', and put out to sea in 
order to reach Sitka, although there was a channel leading from Chatham Strait 
thereto which saved the roughness of a sea voyage. It was shunned, however, 
by most of them, and, m getting the ominous name of Peril Strait, certain sup- 
posed dangers were thought to be lurking in it. Captain Carroll, who has spent 
half an ordinary lifetime in these waters, and done much toward practically 
determining their navigability, found that most of the peril was in the name, — 
at least to ships under his management, — and Peril Straits* are used nearly 
altogether now, making Sitka, though facing the Pacific Ocean, practically on 
the inland passage. 

Just before entering Peril Straits, — by the way, one of the most charming 
of the many channels described, — we stop at a little place ensconced in a 
narrow inlet of Chatham Strait, called Killisnoo. At Killisnoo the Northwest 
Trading Company, of Portland, Oregon, have erected quite extensive works for 
the capture and curing of cod-fish, which has made this something of a port, at 
least for Alaska. There is also a phosphate factory here, where phosphates are 
made from herring, after the oil is extracted. This company formerly caught 
whales in this strait; but I understand the enterprise has been partially, or 
wholly, given up as not paying; or, at least, in proportion to the new enter- 
prises they have more recently opened. Around this part of Admiralty Island 
are the Kootznahoo Indians, who have been quite a warlike band of savages in 
the past, but have been quite mollified by an incident in their troubles, which I 
will give in the language of a correspondent to the New York Times, of 
November 23, 1884 : 

" The Kootznahoo village, near the fishing station of Killisnoo, was the 
scene of the latest naval battle and bombardment on the coast, two years 
ago. A medicine man of the tribe who went out in a whale-boat was killed 
by the explosion of a bomb harpoon, and the Indians demanded money or 
a life as an equivalent for their loss. The Killisnoo traders did not respect 
this Indian law of atonement, and the Indians seized a white man for hos- 
tage. Finding that the hostage had only one eye, they declared him 
cultiis (bad), and sent word that they must have a whole and sound man, or 
his equivalent in blankets, to make up for their lost medicine man. They 
threatened the massacre of the settlement, and word was sent to Sitka for 
help. Captain Merriman, United States navy, went over with the revenue 
cutter ' Corwin ' and the steamer ' Favorite,' and made a counter demand for 
blankets as a guarantee for their future peace and quiet. Failing to respond, 
he carried out his threat of shelling their village, the Indians having 
improved their hours of delay by removing their canoes, valuables and pro- 
visions. Most of the houses were destroyed, and the humbled Indians came 
to terms, and have been the most penitent and reliable friends of the whites 

* The Russian name is Destruction or Pernicious Straits (the reason for which appears further 
on), and, in its improper translation to Peril Straits, many people supposed the name was given 
on account of its dangerous navigation. 
5 




(66) 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 67 

ever since. They have built their houses now around the Killisnoo settle- 
ment ; and, although Captain Merriman left the Territory some time ago, 
they all speak of him as the best of tyees, and the settlers say that the 
naval battle of Killisnoo has made life and property more secure through- 
out the Territory." 

At present the inland passage in the Territory and British Columbia 
is as safe from Indians as Broadway, in New York City, or State street, 
Chicago. In no place in the world of which I know, or have ever heard, 
are the facilities for studying Indian life so good for those who only spend 
a tourist's jaunt among them. Many people along the far Western rail- 
roads will remember seeing here and there a dirty group of assorted Indians, 
begging for alms, and taking full advantage of all the silver-plated sympathy 
showered upon them in that metal ; for they were parts of the curious scenes to 
behold. Generally they were a slim delegation from some far-away agency, and a 
person living in Washington, where the Indian chiefs occasionally visit in their 
full regalia, would have a better chance to see typical Indians than the tourist, 
unless he left the roaa and visited their agencies, a journey of toil and trouble, 
and less welcome if the agent be a stranger. Alaska is widely different. From 
its mountainous, Alpine nature, living inland is out of the question ; and the 
Indians seek the few narrow beaches and low points scattered here and there 
through the inland passage as the places whereon to build their little villages, 
and these are in as full view to the passing steamer as New York and Brooklyn 
are to a boat going up or down the East river channel. At rarer intervals 
more extensive plats of level or rolling land have been found ; and at some of 
these, in proximity to certain places where business pursuits are carried on, 
white men have erected their little towns ; and around these, again, the Indians 
have clustered their curious cabins in the most friendly way, giving the greatest 
access to tourists during even the short time that vessels stop at the ports to 
load and unload their freight. At Wrangell, Sitka, Pyramid Harbor, etc., are 
to be seen villages of Stickeens. Sitkas, Chilkats, Kootznahoos, etc., in close 
juxtaposition. In the Polaris, of Portland, Oregon, under date of November 
19, 1 88 1, I find the following description of the old Stickeen village, just below 
Wrangell, from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Lindsley, a well-known divine and mis- 
sionary of the Northwest : 

" The next day we went to the site of the old Stickeen town. It was 
a beautiful situation, looking out upon the sea, sheltered and with sunny 
exposure. In the bay were several islands. One of them was kept sacred 
as a burial place. The tombs were visible at a distance. These were strong 
boxes raised above the ground for protection, built in the shape of houses, 
sometimes painted, and within which the remains are deposited. We could 
not but admire the rude taste, as well as the sentiments which were thus 
conveyed. The buildings were falling into decay; but enough remained to 
impress us with the fact that their mechanical skill was of no recent origin. The 
Stickeens have occupied the site for generations past ; and here were immense 



68 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



wooden houses that might have been standing a century ago, judging from the 
condition of the wooden buildings which I had examined on the Atlantic 
coast, and which are known to have been erected before the Revolutionary War. 
Those buildings were frail ; these, built of massive timbers and posts of from 
two to three feet in diameter, some round, and others squared. The planks for 
the floors were several inches thick. The mortise and tenon work in the frames 
joined with accuracy, and other mechanical contrivances appeared in these 
structures. All were large, and some immense. I measured one house sixty 
by eighty feet. 

" The domestic life is patriarchal, several families being gathered under one 
roof. Genealogies were kept for ages, and honors and distinctions made 
hereditary. To mark these, insignia, like a coat-of-arms, were adopted, and in 
rude carvings they strove to represent them. I could decipher, also, the paint- 




T'LINKET BASKET WORK. 
(Made by the Indians of the Inland Passage.) 

ings that once figured these upon the posts and sides of houses. The eagle, 
the whale, the bear and the otter, and other animals of sea and land, were the 
favorites, ofttimes coupled with a warrior in the attitude of triumph. Gigantic 
representations of these family emblems were erected near the house, on posts, 
twenty to thirty feet high, covered with carvings of animals, and the devices 
stained with permanent pigments of black, red and blue. [See illustration on 
page dd, which is the front of a chief's house at Kaigan village.] Imaginary 
creatures resembling griffins or dragons, and reminding you of the mammoth 
animals that flourished in a distant geological period, were carved on the posts 
or pictured on the walls. Raised figures resembling hieroglyphics and Asiatic 
alphabets were carved on the inside wall. Some of the posts containing the 
family coat-of-a,rms, thus highly carved and decorated according to the native 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 69 

taste, were used as receptacles for the remains of the dead, gathered up after 
cremation. Great sacredness was attached to them. To injure one was to 
insult the family to which it belonged ; to cut one down was an unpardonable 
offense. 

" The description which I have now given will answer, with some unim- 
portant differences, for the native houses as they are found elsewhere." 

Of the readiness of these Indians to give exhibitions of their savage 
manners and customs for their visitors, — and which one will seldom see else- 
where, and never with so little trouble and effort on the spectator's part, — Dr. 
Lindsley says : " By previous invitation, the missionaries and their guests 
assembled at the house of Tow-ah-att, a tyee, or chief of the Stickeen tribe. 
An exhibition of manners and customs had been prepared for us, to show us 
what Indian life had been. * * * T\\t. insignia on Tow-ah-att's 
house were the eagle and wolf, marking the union of two families. A brief 
address of welcome introduced the entertainment. Among the customs shown 
to us by the dramatic representation, were a warrior with blackened face, with 
spear and helmet, and with belt containing a two-edged knife, or dagger ; a 
chief in full dress made of skins and a robe made of the wool of a mountain 
sheep. [For this robe see the illustration on page 8i.] Each of these presented 
an imposing appearance. After these, masks and effigies appeared ; next, a 
potlatch dance, in which a large number of the natives of both sexes engaged. 
This was followed by dances which were used only upon notable occasions 
which might be called sacred or religious. These dances and the chants were 
regarded by the natives with a species of veneration. We were struck with the 
comparative excellence of the singing which accompanied these dances, dis- 
playing a considerable amount of culture. Evidently much practice had been 
bestowed upon the art, as the large number, young and old, who engaged in 
them, observed the musical rests and parts with great precision. A large 
number of whites and Indians were present at this entertainment, and the 
house was not crowded. Our entertainers observed some formalities which 
could do no discredit to the most enlightened assemblies. After an address of 
welcome, and short speeches from visitors, one of the chiefs, Tow-ah-att, 
delivered a formal discourse." 

Mr. Ivan Petroff, a Russian, of Alaska, who was deputized by the Superin- 
tendent of the United States Census of 1880 to collect statistics for his report 
regarding Alaska Territory, finds the following interesting items regarding the 
Indian tribes which the tourist will encounter in his trip to Southeastern 
Alaska : 

" The outward characteristics of the T'linkit tribe may be enumerated as 
follows : The coarse, stiff, coal-black hair, dark eyebrows, but faintly delineated 
over the large black eyes full of expression ; protruding cheek bones ; thick, 
full lips (the under lips of the women disfigured by the custom of inserting 
round or oval pieces of wood or bone), and the septum of the men pierced for 
the purpose of inserting ornaments ; beautiful white teeth ; ears pierced not 



70 THROUGH WONDERLAND 

only in the lobes, but all around the rim. To these may be added the dark color 
of the skin, a medium stature, and a proud, erect bearing (this only applies to the 
men). The hands of the women are very small, and large feet are rarely met with- 

" Before their acquaintance with the Russians, the only clothing of the 
T'linkits consisted of skins sewed together, which they threw around their naked 
bodies without regard to custom or fashion. In addition to this, they wore, 
on festive occasions, blankets woven out of the fleeces of mountain goats. 
From time immemorial they have possessed the art of dyeing this material 
black and yellow by means of charcoal and a kind of moss called sckhone. The 
patterns of these blankets, wrought in colors, exhibit an astonishing degree of 
skill and industry ; the hat, plaited of roots, is also ornamented with figures 
and representations of animals. 

" Both men and women paint their faces black and red with charcoal or soot, 
and vermilion (cinnabar), which are their favorite colors. They are mixed with 
seal oil, and rubbed well into the cuticle ; subsequently, figures and patterns 
are scratched upon this surface with sticks of wood. The wealthy T'linkits 
paint their faces every day, while the plebeians indulge in this luxury only occa- 
sionally. As a rule, the T'linkits of both sexes go barefooted. 

" The men pierce the partition of the nose, the operation being performed 
in early childhood, frequently within a few weeks after birth. In the aperture 
thus made a silver ring is sometimes inserted large enough to cover the mouth; 
but the poorer individuals insert other articles, such as feathers, etc. They 
also pierce the lobes of the ear for the purpose of inserting shark's teeth, 
shells, and other ornaments, while through the holes around the rim of the ear 
they draw bits of red worsted or small feathers. Veniaminoff states that each 
hole in the ear was pierced in memory of some event or deed. 

" The ornamentation of the under lip of a female (now almost obsolete) 
marked an epoch in her life. As long as she remained single she wore this; 
but, as soon as she was married, a larger piece of wood or bone was pressed 
into the opening, and annually replaced by a still larger one, the inner side 
being hollowed out. It was, of course, impossible for these individuals to close 
their mouths, the under lip protruding, distended by the disk of wood or bone. 

" Veniaminoff states that among the T'linkits the married women are permitted 
to have what are called ' assistant husbands,' who are maintained by the 
wives. Among the T'linkits the office of vice-husband can only be filled by a 
brother or near relative of the husband. 

" The T'linkits burn their dead upon funeral pyres, with the exception of the 
bodies of shamans, or sorcerers, which are deposited in boxes elevated on posts. 
The dead slave is not considered worthy of any ceremony whatever; his corpse 
is thrown into the sea like the carcass of a dog. When a T'linkit dies his rela- 
tives prepare a great feast, inviting a multitude of guests, especially if the 
deceased has been a chief or a wealthy member of a clan. The guests are 
chosen only from a strange clan; for instance, if the deceased belonged to the 
Raven clan, the guests must be from the Wolf clan, and vice versa. No certain 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 71 

time is set for the cremation or for the festivities; this depends altogether 
upon the magnitude of the preparations. Poor people who are unable 
to defray the cost of such ceremonies, take their dead to some distant 
cove or bay, and burn them without any display. When the guests have assem- 
bled and the pyre has been erected, the corpse is carried out of the village by 
invited guests, and placed upon the fagots. The pyre is then ignited in the 
presence of the relatives; but these latter take no active part, confining them- 
selves to crying, weeping and howling. On such occasions many burn their 
hair, placing the head in the flames; others cut the hair short, and smear 
the face with the ashes of the deceased. When the cremation of the body has 
been accomplished, the guests return to the dwelling of the deceased, and seat 
themselves with the widow, who belongs to their clan, around the walls of the 
hut; the relatives of the deceased then appear with hair burned and cropped, 
faces blackened and disfigured, and place themselves within the circle of guests, 
sadly leaning upon sticks with bowed heads, and then begin their funeral 
dirges with weeping and howling. The guests take up the song when the rel- 
atives are exhausted, and thus the howling is kept up for four nights in succes- 
sion, with only a brief interruption for refreshment. During this period of 
mourning, if the deceased had been a chief, or wealthy, the relatives formerly 
killed one or two slaves, according to the rank of the dead, in order to give him 
service in the other world. At the end of the period of mourning, or on the 
fourth day following the cremation, the relatives wash their blackened faces and 
paint them with gay colors, at the same time making presents to all the guests, 
chiefly to those who assisted in burning the corpse. Then the guests are 
feasted again, and the ceremony is at an end. The heir of the deceased is his 
sister's son, or, if he has no such relative, a younger brother. The heir was 
compelled to marry the widow." 

While I was at Chilkat the chief of the Crow clan was cremated with 
most savage ceremonials, no doubt well worth seeing, to which I was invited; 
but my preparations for my expedition kept me from accepting the invitation. 

Leaving Killisnoo, we cross Chatham Strait almost at right angles to its 
course (or due west), here about ten miles wide, and enter Peril Straits, about 
thirty-five miles long. They sweep boldly to the north in a great arc, and, like 
all winding and rapidly and alternately widening and narrowing of the inland 
channels, they are extremely picturesque, more from the contrast of different 
scenes so swiftly changed before one's eyes, than from anything radically new 
so presented. The old Russian name for them was Paboogni (meaning "perni- 
cious") Strait, and they got this title rather from an incident of appetite than 
bad navigation. In the latter part of last century the Russians used to import 
the poor Aleuts of the Aleutian Islands, far to the westward, as mercenaries to 
fight their battles for them against the T'hnkit Indians of this region ; and, 
while encamped here, they partook of a large number of mussels, which proved 
poisonous, killing some, and putting many on the sick list for that particular 
campaign. In some of the very contracted places the tides run with great 




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THROUGH WONDERLAND. 73 

velocity; but, by taking advantage of the proper times (which the nearness of 
Kilhsnoo on one side and Sitka on the other makes easy) and a more thorough 
knowledge of the few impediments, the dangers to navigation here are now 
about nil. Once through Peril Straits, we can look out on the Pacific Ocean 
through Salisbury Sound for a few minutes before turning southward through a 
series of short straits and channels "too numerous to mention;" and then, 
after twenty to twenty-five miles of sailing, we come to Sitka, the capital of 
the Territory. It is most picturesquely located at the head of Sitka Sound, 
through which, looking in a southwest direction, the Pacific Ocean is plainly 
visible. Looking in this way, its bay seems full of pretty little islets, sprinkled 
all over it, that are almost invisible as seen from the ocean when approaching, 
so densely are they covered with timber, and so exactly like the timbered hills 
of the mainland, against which they are thrown. The steamer, after winding 
its way through a tortuous channel, finally brings to at a commodious wharf, 
with the city before you, which is in strange contrast with the wild, rugged 
scenery through which the tourist has been sailing. To our left, as we pass on 
to the wharf, is the Indian village of the Sitkas, one of the largest among the 
islands of the inland passage. To our front and right stretch the white 
settlements of the town. At the large Indian village, which is near — or, really, 
part of — Sitka, there are estimated to gather fully a thousand Indians in the 
winter time, the summer finding them partially dispersed over a greater area to 
gain their sustenance. These houses are like those described as being near 
Wrangell. In one- way they have somewhat patterned after white men, in 
partitioning off the ends and sides of these large rooms into sleeping apart- 
ments by canvas and cloth drapery. It is said that the most fiendish cere- 
monies and diabolical cruelties were practiced at their "house-warmings," so to 
speak. Before the white men put a stop to these ceremonies, a slave was killed, 
with the greatest cruelties, under each of the corner uprights; and, as a house 
could not have less than four of these, and sometimes had more, by its irreg- 
ularities, one may contemplate the suffering with which a large village like that 
at Sitka has been baptized. 

In the town proper the Greek Church is the most conspicuous and interesting 
object to the tourist, and especially those who have never seen one of this 
religion. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, in plan, and is surmounted by 
an Oriental dome over the centre, which has been painted an emerald green 
color. One wing is used as a chapel, and contains, besides a curious font, 
an exquisite painting of the Virgin and Child, copied from the celebrated pic- 
ture at Moscow. All the drapery is of silver, and the halo of gold ; so, of the 
painting itself, nothing is seen but the faces and background. The chancel, 
which is raised above the body of the church, is approached by three broad 
steps leading to four doors, two of which are handsomely carved and richly 
gilded, and contain four oval and two square bas reliefs. Above is a large 
picture of the Last Supper, covered, like that of the Madonna, with silver, as are 
two others, one on each side of the altar. Across the threshold of these doors 



74 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

no woman may set her foot, and across the inner ones to the innermost sanc- 
tuary none but the priest himself, or his superiors in the general Greek Church, 
or the white Czar, can enter. The doors, however, usually stand open ; and the 
priest in residence. Father Metropaulski, is exceedingly courteous to visitors, 
showing them the costly and magnificent vestments and the bishop's crown, 
almost covered with pearls and amethysts. The ornaments and the candelabra 
are all of silver, the walls are hung with portraits of princes and prelates, and 
the general effect is rich in the extreme. 

Next to the church in interest — Vt'ith some visitors, probably, ranking before 
it — is the old Muscovite castle on the hill. Here, in days gone by, the stern 
Romanoff ruled this land, and Baron Wrangell, one of Russia's many cele- 
brated Polar explorers, held sway. It is said that it has been twice destroyed, 
once by fire and then by an earthquake, but was again erected with such staunch 
belongings that it will probably stand for ages much as it is to-day. It is now 
used as an office for United States Government officials, and it has a ball-room 
and theatre, with the same old brass chandeliers and huge bronze hinges that 
adorned it in its glory. The whole building has a semi-deserted and melan- 
choly appearance ; but it is of exceeding interest, speaking to us as it does of a 
grander history, when Sitka was the metropolis of the Pacific coast of North 
America, and it was the centre from which such power emanated. To senti- 
mental tourists I will relate a tradition that has been published concerning the 
stern old castle ; and, whether it fits the truth or not, it fits the sombre 
surroundings of the ancient pile. It runs, that, when Baron Romanoff was gov- 
ernor, he had living with him an orphan niece and ward, who, like all orphan 
nieces in feudal castles, especially those who figure in tradition, was very beau- 
tiful. But, when the baron commanded her to marry a beautiful prince, who 
was a guest at the castle, she refused, having given her heart to a handsome 
young lieutenant of the household. The old baron, who, like the rest of his 
race in traditional accounts, was an accomplished diplomate, feigning an interest 
in the young lieutenant which he did not feel, sent him away on a short expe- 
dition, and in the mean time hurried on the preparations for the marriage of the 
unhappy girl to the prince. Deprived of the support of her lover's counsels and 
presence, she yielded to the threats of her uncle, and the ceremony was solem- 
nized. Half an hour after the marriage, while the rejoicing and the gayety were 
at' their height, the young lieutenant strode into the ball-room, his travel- 
stained dress and haggard appearance contrasting strangely with the glittering 
costumes and gay faces of the revelers ; and, during the silence which followed 
his ominous appearance, he stepped up to the hapless girl, and took her hand. 
After gazing for a few moments on the ring the prince had placed there, he, 
without a word, and before any one could interfere, drew a dagger from his belt, 
and stabbed her to the heart. In the wild confusion that followed, he escaped 
from the castle ; and, overcome with grief, unable to live without the one he so 
fondly loved, yet ruthlessly murdered, he threw himself into the sea. And now 
her spirit is seen on the anniversary of her wedding night, her slender form 




(75) 



76 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

robed in heavy silk brocade, pressing her hands on the wound in her heart, the 
tears streaming from her eyes. Sometimes, before a severe storm, she makes her 
appearance in the httle tower at the top of the building once used as a light- 
house. There she burns a light until dawn for the spirit of her lover at sea. 

Almost directly west from Sitka, about fifteen miles distant, is Mount Edge- 
cumbe, so named by Cook, it having previously been called Mount San Jacinto 
by Bodega in 1775, '^^''d Mount St. Hyacinth again by La Perouse. Tchirikov, 
before all others, I believe, got it chronicled as Mount St. Lazarus ; and it looked 
as if it would go through the whole calendar of the saints, and their different 
national changes, if it had not gotten pretty firmly rooted as Mount Edgecumbe. 
It is nearly 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and looks like a peak of 5,000 
feet cut off by a huge shaving plane at its present height. This truncated apex 
is a crater, said to be, by those who have visited it, some 2,000 feet in diameter 
by one-tenth as deep. \\\ the early and middle summer time, the snow from its 
table-like crown has partially disappeared, and the bright red volcanic rock 
projects in radiating ridges from the white covering that is disappearing, 
making a most beautiful crest to a mountain already picturesque by its singular 
isolation. When in this condition, with the western setting sun directly over it, 
and its golden beams radiating upward, and the royal red ridges radiating down- 
ward, both thrown against their background of blue sky and water and white 
snow, it makes a superb picture that the brush of a Turner could hardly copy, let 
alone a feeble pen describe. 

Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, who visited this portion of Alaska in 1877, and gave 
a graphic description of his travels in the Century Magazine of July, 1882, gives 
therein the following interesting Lidian legend concerning Mount Edgecumbe: 

" One drowsy eve we saw the peak of Edgecumbe for the last time. The 
great truncated cone caught the hues of the sunset, and we could note the 
gloom gathering deeper and deeper in the hollow of the crater. Our Lidians 
were stolidly smoking the tobacco we had given them, and were resting after 
the labors of the day with bovine contentment. Tah-ah-nah-kleck related to us 
the T'linkit legend of Edgecumbe. 

"A longtime ago the earth sank beneath the water, and the water rose and cov- 
ered the highest places, so that no man could live. It rained so hard that it was as 
if the sea fell from the sky. All was black, and it became so dark, that no man knew 
another. Then a few people ran here and there and made a raft of cedar logs; but 
nothing could stand against the white waves, and the raft was broken in two. 

" On one part floated the ancestors of the T'linkits ; on the other, the parents 
of all other nations. The waters tore them apart, and they never saw each 
other again. Now their children are all different, and do not understand each 
other. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his sister Ah-gish-S,hn-ahkon 
[The-woman-who-supports-the-earth]. Chethl [symbolized in the osprey] called 
aloud to her, 'You will never see me again; but you will hear my voice forever I' 
Then he became an enormous bird, and flew to southwest, till no eye could 
follow him. Ah-gish-Ahn-ahkon climbed above the waters, and reached the 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 77 

summit of Edgecumbe. The mountain opened, and received her into the 
bosom of the earth. That hole [the crater] is where she went down. Ever 
since that time she has held the earth above the water. The earth is shaped 
like the back of a turtle, and rests on a pillar ; Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon holds the 
pillar. Evil spirits that wish to destroy mankind seek to overthrow her and 
drive her away. The terrible battles are long and fierce in the lower darkness. 
Often the pillar rocks and sways in the struggle, and the earth trembles and 
seems like to fall ; but Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon is good and strong, so the earth is 
safe. Chethl lives in the bird Kunna-Kaht-eth ; his nest is in the top of the 
mountain, in the hole through which his sister disappeared. 

" He carries whales in his claws to this eyrie, and there devours them. He 
swoops from his hiding-place, and rides on the edge of the coming storm. The 
roaring of the tempest is his voice calling to his sister. He claps his wings 
in the peals of thunder, and its rumbling is the rustling of his pinions. The 
lightning is the flashing of his eyes." 

Looking inland are the glacier-clad summits of the interior mountains, 
Vostovia predominating, where few peopl-e, even among the Indians of the 
country, have ever been. Taking all its surroundings, it may be well said, 
as has been written, that Sitka Bay rivals in scenic beauty its nearest counter- 
part, the far-famed Bay of Naples. Near Sitka comes in a beautiful mount- 
ain stream called the Indian river. A most picturesque road leads out to this 
rambling brook, and a less frequented trail winds up its valley ; but, if the 
steamer stops long enough to warrant the tramp, no one should fail to stroll 
along its two or three miles of, winding way, embowered in absolutely tropical 
foliage, so dense and deep is it. It is the only road worthy of the name in 
Alaska ; and, if one wends his way through it, and then combines his information 
acquired thereby with a view of the Alpine country of this part of the Territory, 
he will plainly comprehend why there are no more roads than this particular 
one, and feel willing to give full credit to its makers. It is near the half-way 
point of the journey, also ; and this warrants a little inshore exercise that can 
be had at no other stopping place so well. 

About ten or eleven miles south of Sitka, on the mainland, but protected 
seaward by a breakwater of (Necker) islands, is Hot Springs Bay, on whose 
shores are springs which give it its name. About six or seven years before we 
obtained the Territory, the Russian American Fur Company, whose headquarters 
were at Sitka (since Baron Wrangell established them there in 1832), built a 
hospital at Hot Springs, which was said to have had wonderful remedial powers 
in skin and rheumatic diseases ; but, for some reasons, the place has been aban- 
doned (probably the lack of government by the United States), and the build- 
ings are reported to be in a state of decay. The Indians used the waters for 
illness, and thus called the attention of the Russians thereto. The temperature 
of the water is from 120 to 125 degrees, and it contains a number of elements 
held in solution, as sulphur, chlorine, manganese, sodium and iron, besides com- 
binations of these, and with other elements. It is worth a visit to see these hot 




(78) 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 



79 



springs, with the thermometer soaring up above the hundreds ; for, m a day or 
two, by way of strange contrast, you will be among glaciers and icebergs tower- 
ing as far in feet above your head. 

The only way out of Sitka harbor, without putting to sea, is back through Peril 
Straits again ; and, passing back, one can hardly realize that it is the same water- 
way, so radically different are the views presented. In the harbor of Sitka is 
Japonskoi (Japanese) Island, which may. be identified by the captain's chart of 
the harbor, and which has a curious history. Here, about eighty years ago, an 
old Japanese junk, that had drifted across the sea on the Kuro-Siwo, or Japan- 
ese current, was stranded, and the Russians kindly cared for the castaway 
sailors who had survived the dreadful drift, and returned them to their country, 
after an experience that is seldom equaled, even in the romantic accounts of 
maritime misfortunes. The drifting of Japanese junks, and those of adjacent 
countries, is not so infrequent as one would suppose, and this fact might set the 
reflective man to thinking as to the ethnical possibilities accruing therefrom, the 
settlement of North America, etc. 

This Kuro-Siwo, or Japanese current, — sometimes called black current, or 
Japanese black current, from its hue, — corresponds in many ways to the Gulf 
Stream of the Atlantic : like it, its waters are warmed in the equatorial regions 
under a vertical sun ; and, like it, a great portion of these waters are carried 
northward in its flow, and their heat poured upon the eastern shores of its ocean, 
till their climate is phenomenally temperate compared with the western shores in 
the same parallels. Sitka is said to have, as a result of facing this current, a 
mean winter temperature of a point half way between Baltimore and Washing- 
ton, or slightly milder than the winter temperature of Baltimore. It is said to 
be no unusual thing to suffer from an ice famine in Sitka. A short way inland 
the winters are not so temperate, more snow falling at that season, while rain 
characterizes the coast face ; but during the summer, or excursion season, these 
rains are not unpleasantly frequent. I take the following from a letter from 
Sitka, and published in the San Francisco Bulletin of January 9, 1882, before 
this country was really opened to excursionists, although the subject was being 
discussed, so much had been heard of this wonderland : 

" The climate, as shown by the meteorological data collected by the signal 
service observers, is not of such a disagreeable character as some would have us 
believe. The scientific data collected and tabulated for the year 1881, as shown 
by the records at Sitka, Chilkoot, Juneau and Killisnoo, disprove most emphat- 
ically the seemingly malicious assertions in reference to its climate. 



Mean Temperature . 
Max. Temperature . 
Min. Temperature . . 
Total rainfall, inches 



April. 



42.5 
56.5 
31- 
4.21 



May. 



45-4 
61. 

31- 

3-1 



June. 



51-2 

65. 

41- 

1-54 



July. 



54-2 
67. 

43- 
4.4 



Aug. 



56.7 
79- 
43-9 
1.98 



Sept. 



54- 
63.8 

40.5 
12. II 



Oct. 



46.3 
57.8 
32. 
5-Oh 



Nov. 



41.8 

52.S 
22.5 
13-5 



Dec. 



34-8 
44-9 
14- 
10.52 



80 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

" A study of the above data, combined with an actual experience, compels 
the writer to admit that the summer weather of Southeastern Alaska is the 
most delightful that can be enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of this 
vast territory, and throws in the shade all the boasted claims of many, if not most, 
of the famous summer resorts in the ' States.' There were only two days during 
the long, pleasant summer, that were rendered disagreeable by that feeling of 
oppressiveness caused by heat. The nights were cool and pleasant ; the days 
always warm enough for open windows, through which the invigorating breezes 
from the snow-capped mountains or the broad Pacific, would blow at will ; the 
long, bright days, when the sun disappeared only for a few hours, when twilight, 
after sunset, seemed to mingle with the rays of early dawn ; the nights beauti- 
fied by the dancing beams of the aurora borealis, and the myriad stars that 
seemed as if hung on invisible threads in the deep blue firmament. * * 
In regard to the summer weather, I reiterate that no one could possibly choose 
a more delightful place in which to spend a portion of the heated term than in 
making a trip through this portion of the Territory." 

"In Alaska, in midsummer," according to a late letter, "the almost con- 
tinuous light of day shines upon bright green slopes, shaded here and there 
with dark timber belts, rising up from the deep blue waters. An endless variety 
of bright-hued flowers, the hum of insects, and melodious song of birds, 
* * * would cause a stranger, suddenly translated there, to think 
himself in any country but Alaska." — Chicago Herald, 1885. 

When we are some five or six miles back on our northward way to Peril 
Straits, a pretty little bay, on Baronoff Island, is pointed out to us, on our star- 
board (by this time all the passengers are able seamen) side, called Old Harbor, 
or Starri-Gaven, in Russian. It was there that Baronoff built his first fort, called 
the Archangel Gabriel, in 1799, which, after a number of rapidly recurring 
vicissitudes, was annihilated, and its garrison massacred, by the Sitka Indians, 
three years later. Baronoff re-established his power at the present site of Sitka, 
calling the new place Archangel Michael, — Archangel Gabriel having failed in 
his duty as a protector ; and from this name it was called New Archangel, 
which changed to Sitka with the change of flags in 1867, although American 
maps had dubbed it Sitka before this. 

Once more in Chatham Strait, with the ship's head pointed northward, we 
are on our way to the northernmost recesses of the inland passage, and with 
the greatest wonders of our wonderland ahead of us. At its northern end, 
Chatham Strait divides into two narrow waterways. Icy Strait leading off to the 
west, to the land and waters of glaciers and icebergs, while Lynn Canal con- 
tinues broad Chatham to the north. Lynn Canal is a double-headed inlet, the 
western arm at its head being called the Chilkat Inlet, and the eastern arm 
the Chilkoot Inlet, after two tribes of T'linkit Indians living on 
these respective channels. It is a beautiful sheet of water, more Alpine in 
character than any yet entered. Glaciers of blue and emerald ice can be seen 
almost everywhere, peeping from underneath the snow-capped mountains and 



THRO UGH WONDERLAND. 



81 



ranges that closely enclose this well-protected canal, and render it picturesque 
in the extreme. Here is the Eagle Glacier on the right, and dozens that have 
never been named, and a most massive one (Davison's) on our left, just as we 
enter Chilkat Inlet. At the head of Chilkat Inlet is Pyramid Harbor, so 
named after an island of pyramidal profile in its waters. It marks the highest 
point you will probably reach in the inland passage, unless Chilkoot Inlet is 
entered, which is occasionally done. 

We are now in the land of the Chilkats, one of the most aggressive and 
arrogant, yet withal industrious and wealthy, Indian tribes of the T'linkits. It 




CHILKAT BLANKET, 

should be remembered that all the Alaskan Indians of the inland passage 
(except the Hy-dahs of Dixon Entrance) are bound together by a common lan- 
guage, called the T'linkit ; but having so little else in sympathy that the sub- 
tribes often war against each other, these sub-tribes having separate chiefs, 
medicine men and countries, in fact, and being known by different names. We 
have already spoken of the Stickeens, Kootznahoos, Sitkas, etc.; and by these 
names they are known among the whites of this portion of the Territory, the title 
T'linkit being seldom heard. At the salmon cannery, on the west shore, a small 



82 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

but recently built village of Chilkats is clustered ; but, to see them in "all their 
glory," the Chilkat river should be ascended to their principal village of Kluk- 
wan. 

Of this country, — the Chilkat and Chilkoot, — Mrs. Eugene S. Willard, the 
wife of the missionary presiding at Haines Mission, in Chilkoot Inlet, and who 
has resided here a number of years, writes in the Ccutury Magazine, of 
October, 1885: 

" From Portage Bay(of Chilkoot Inlet) west to the Chilkat river and southward 
to the point, lies the largest tract of arable land, so far as my knowledge goes, 
in Southeastern Alaska, while the climate does not differ greatly from that of 
Pennsylvania * * * Here summer reaches perfection, never 
sultry, rarely chilling. * * * j,-j jyj^y ^j^^ world and the sun wake 
np together. In his new zeal, we find old Sol up before us at 2:15 a. m., 
and he urges us on until 9:45 at night. Even then the light is only turned 
down ; for the darkest hour is like early summer twilight, not too dark for 
reading. 

" From our front door to the pebbly beach below, the wild sweet pea runs 
rampant ; while under and in and through it spring the luxuriant phlox, 
Indian rice, the white-blossomed 'yun-ate,' and wild roses which make redo- 
lent every breath from the bay. Passing out the back door, a few steps lead us 
into the dense pine woods, whose solitudes are peopled with great bears, and 
owls, and — T'linkit ghosts ! while eagles and ravens soar without number. On 
one tree alone we counted thirty bald eagles. These trees are heavily draped 
with moss, hanging in rich festoons from every limb ; and into the rich carpet- 
ing underneath, one's foot may sink for inches. Here the ferns reach mam- 
moth size, though many of fairy daintiness are found among the moss ; and the 
devil's walking stick stands in royal beauty at every turn, with its broad, grace- 
ful leaves, and waxen, red berries. 

'' Out again into the sunshine, and we discover meadows of grass and clover, 
through which run brigltt little streams, grown over with willows, just as at 
home. And here and there are clumps of trees, so like the peach and apple, 
that a lump comes into your throat. But you lift your eyes, and there beyond 
is the broad shining of the river, and above it the ever-present, dream-dispel- 
ling peaks of snow, with their blue ice sliding down and down. * * 

"The Chilkat people long ago gained for themselves the reputation of being 
the most fierce and warlike tribe in the Archipelago. Certain it is, that, 
between themselves and southern Hy-dah, there is not another which can com- 
pare with them in strength, either as to numbers, intelligence, physical perfec- 
tion, or wealth. * * * 'Y\\t. children always belong ' to their 
mother, and are of her to-tem. This to-temic relation is considered closer than 
that of blood. If the father's and mother's tribes be at war, the children must 
take the maternal side, even if against their father. * * * jj-j very 
rare cases a woman has two husbands ; oftener we find a man with two wives, 
even three ; but more frequently met than either is the consecutive wife. 



THRO UGH WONDERLAND. 



83 



" The Chilkats are comparatively an industrious people. On the mainland 
we have none of the deer which so densely populate the islands, owing, it is 
said, to the presence of bears and wolves ; but we have the white mountain 
goat, which, while it is lamb, is delicious meat. From its black horns the 
finest carved spoons are made, and its pelt, when washed and combed, forms a 
necessary part of the Indian's bedding and household furniture. The comb- 
ings are made by the women into rolls similar to those made by machinery at 
home. Then, with a great basket of these white rolls on one side, and a basket 
on the other to receive the yarn, a woman sits on the floor, and, on her bared 




knee, with her palm, rolls it into cord. This they dye in most brilliant colors 
made of roots, grasses and moss, and of different kinds of bark. 

" It is of this yarn that the famous Chilkat dancing-blanket is made. This is 
done by the women with great nicety and care. The warp, all white, is hung 
from a handsomely carved upright frame. Into it the bright colors are 
wrought by means of ivory shuttles. The work is protected during the tedious 
course of its manufacture by a covering resembling oiled silk, made from the 
dressed intestines of the bear. Bright striped stockings of this yarn are also 
knitted on little needles whittled from wood." 

An illustration of a dancing-blanket is given on page 8i. These are made 
by several of the T'linkit tribes ; but the Chilkats so predominate in the manufact- 



84 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

ure, both in numbers and excellence, that you seldom hear them mentioned in 
Alaska, except as Chilkat blankets. Nearly all of the T'linkit tribes, as the tourist 
will have seen by this time, spend most of their out-of-cloor time in the water, 
in their canoes ; and this constant semi-aquatic life has told on their physical 
development to the extent of giving them very dwarfed and illy developed 
lower limbs, although the trunk and arms are well developed. When walking, 
they seem to shamble along more like an aquatic fowl on land than a human 
being. The Chilkats are noticeable exceptions. Although their country is 
much more mountainous in appearance than others lower down, yet here are 
some of the most accessible of the few mountain passes by which the interior, a 
rich fur-bearing district, can be gained. The Chilkats have yearly taken 
trading goods from the white men, lashed them into packs of about a hundred 
pounds, and carried them on their backs through these glacier-clad passes, and 
traded them for furs, bringing them out in the same way. They monopolized 
the trade by the simple process of prohibiting the interior Indians from coming 
to the sea-coast to trade. The Chilkats therefore are probably the richest tribe 
of Indians in the Northwest, the chief having two houses full of blankets, their 
standard of value, at the village of Kluk-wan. 

To. those who find their greatest pleasure in a rough, out-of-door life, let 
them leave the steamer at this point, hire three or four Indians to carry their 
company effects on their backs, and make an Alpine journey to the head of the 
Yukon river, where lakes aggregating 150 miles in length can be passed over in 
a canoe. The route leads up the Dayay river, over the Terrier Pass in the 
Kotusk Mountains. The trip could be made between visiting steamers, and I 
will guarantee the persons will come back with more muscle than they took in. 

Bidding good-bye to the picturesque country of the Chilkats, the steamer's 
head is turned south again ; and, when just about ready to leave Lynn Canal, we 
entered an intricate series of channels bearing eastward, and which bring us to 
the great mining town of Juneau, where many Alaskan hopes are centred. 
This is what a correspondent of the Chicago Times, under date of February 23, 
1885, says of this Alaskan town and its curious history : 

" The centre from which radiates whatever of excitement and interest there 
is in Alaskan mines is Douglas Island. The history of the discovery of ore 
near this island, which eventually led to the location of the present much-talked- 
of property, is similar to that attending the finding of most of the large mines in 
the West. It seems that some half-dozen years ago two needy and seedy pros- 
pectors named Juneau and Harris arrived at an Indian village that still remains 
visible on the shore across the bay from Douglas Island, in search of ore. They 
prospected the country as thoroughly as they could, with but little success, and 
were about to return home when an Indian said that he knew where gold existed, 
ajid that he would reveal the place for a certain sum of money. Hardly believ- 
ing, but yet curious, Harris and Juneau accepted the offer, and, with their 
guide, set out on a pilgrimage into the interior to a spot now known as ' The 
Basin.' After a long tramp through the forests, and up a deep valley, the 



THRO UGH WONDERLAND. 



85 



Indian showed them a place where there were nuggets of free gold and dirt, 
which, when panned, yielded a handsome return. Claims were immediately 
staked out, arid the adventurers began their work in earnest. Later, the fact of 
the discovery became known, and other miners entered the valley, and the 
region gained no little celebrity, and became the scene of much animation. 
Four years the work progressed, and a town, which to-day is of respectable size 
and great expectations, was founded, and christened Juneau. 

" The Douglas Island mine is located within fifty yards of the waters of 
Juneau Bay, and was discovered by a man named Treadwell, who sold his 
claim a year or two ago to a San Francisco company. The new owners set up 
a fine stamp-mill to begin with, and made thorough tests of the ore. It is a 120- 
stamp mill, the largest in the world, and the company has refused, it is said, 
$16,000,000 for the mine." 

Since the above was written, and as late as last August, reports from 
there gave the astonishing showing of enough ore in sight to keep the 120- 




T'LINKET CARVED SPOONS. 
(Made trom the Horns of Mountain Goats.) 

stamp mill "running for a life-time." The uninitiated in mining mills, ledges 
and lodes, may grasp the value of the mine by saying its output for a twenty- 
days run of the stamp-mill was $100,000 in gold, or at the rate of $1,800,000 
per year ; which, estimating its value on an income of five per cent, annually, 
would make the mine worth $36,000,000, or just five times the amount we paid 
for the whole Territory. There is no doubt whatever in the minds of many 
experts, that there are a number of such places as the Treadwell mine yet to be 
found, the great difficulty of prospecting in the dense, deep mass of fallen tim- 
ber covered with wet moss and thick underbrush on the steepest mountain 
sides, coupled with the little probability of the Treadwell being an isolated case 
in such a uniformly Alpine country, amply justifying them in coming to such 
conclusions. A visit to the mines is one the tourists can readily make. At 
Juneau we find the Takoo band of T'linkits in a village near by, where nearly 
all that has been said regarding Alaskan Indians may be here repeated. The 



8G THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

very curious spoons they carve from the horns of the mountain goat, which are 
figured on page 85, and beautifully woven mats, and the baskets shown on 
page 68, may be purchased ; and, in leaving a few pieces of silver among 
them for their own handiwork, little as it is that we have thus done for them, it 
is far more than the extremists of either side in the Indian question have done, 
those who would exterminate, or those who would sentimentalize in print over 
their wrongs. 

Bidding the mining metropolis of Alaska farewell, our bowsprit is once 
more pointed for the Pacific Sea ; but, before we reach it, or get quite to it, we 
turn northward and enter Glacier Bay, its name signifying its main attractions. 
Glaciers, which are great rivers or sheets of ice made from compacted snows, 
are functions as much of altitude as of high latitude ; and both unite here, with 
an air charged with moisture from the warm Pacific waters, to make the grand 
glaciers which are to be seen in this bay. In the immediate vicinity are the 
Mount St. Elias Alps, a snowy range which culminates in the well-known peak 
from which it derives its name ; and, radiating from their flanks, come down these 
rivers of ice, reaching the sea-level in the greatest perfection in Glacier Bay, 
the largest one of the grand group being the Muir Glacier, after Professor John 
Muir, the scientist, of California, who is said to be the first to discover it. I 
will give the language of the man who claims to be the second to arrive upon 
the scene, and who gives his account in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, writing 
from Glacier Bay, July 14, 1883 : 

" When Dick Willoughby told of the great glacier, thirty miles up the bay, 
the thud of whose falling ice could be heard and felt at his house, the captain 
of the ' Idaho ' said he would go there, and took this Dick Willoughby along 
to find the place and prove the tale. Away we went coursing up Glacier Bay, a 
fleet of 112 little icebergs gayly sailing out to meet us as we left our anchorage 
the next morning. Entering into these unknown and unsurveyed waters, the lead 
was cast through miles of bottomless channels ; and, when the pilot neared a 
green and mountainous little island, he made me an unconditional present of 
the domain, and duly entered its bearings on the ship's log. For a summer 
resort my island possesses unusual advantages, and I hereby invite all sufl'ering 
and perspiring St. Louis to come to that emerald spot in latitude 58 degrees 29 
minutes north, and longitude 135 degrees 52 minutes west from Greenwich, and 
enjoy the July temperature of 42 degrees, the whale fishing, the duck hunting, 
and a sight of the grandest glacier in the world. 

" But one white man had ever visited the glacier before us, and he was the 
irrepressible geologist and scientist, John Muir, who started out in an Indian 
canoe, with a few blankets and some hard-tack, and spent days scrambling over 
the icy wastes. Feeling our way along carefully, we cast anchor beside a 
grounded iceberg, and the photographers were rowed off to a small island to 
take the view of the ship in the midst of that arctic scenery. Mount Crillon 
showed his hoary head to us in glimpses between the clouds ; and then, rounding 
Willoughby Island, which the owner declares is solid marble of a quality to rival 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 87 

that of Pentelicus and Carrara, we saw the full front of the great Muir Glacier, 
wliere it dips down and breaks into the sea. At the first breathless glance at 
that glorious ice-world, all fancies and dreams were surpassed : the marvelous 
beaut}' of those shining, silvery pinnacles and spires, the deep blue buttresses, 
the arches and aisles of that fretted front, struck one with awe. In all Switzer- 
land there is nothing comparable to these Alaskan glaciers, where the frozen 
wastes rise straight from the sea, and a steamer can go up within an eighth of a 
mile, and cruise beside them. Add to the picture of high mountains and snowy- 
glaciers a sapphire bay scattered over with glittering little icebergs, and nature 
can supply nothing more to stir one's soul, to rouse the fancy and imagination, 
and enchant the senses. The vastness of this Muir Glacier is enough alone to 
overpower one with a sense of the might and strength of these forces of nature. 
Dry figures can give one little idea of the great, desolate stretches of gray ice 
and snow that slope out of sight behind the jutting mountains, and the tumbled 
and broken front forced down to and into the sea. Although not half of the 
glacier has been explored, it is said to extend back 40 miles. 

"What we could know accurately was, that the front of the glacier was two 
miles across, and that the ice- wall rose 500 and 1,000 feet from the water. The 
lead cast at the point nearest to the icy front gave eighty fathoms, or 240 feet, 
of water ; and, in the midst of those deep soundings, icebergs filled with 
boulders lay grounded with forty feet of their summits visible above water. 
At very low tide, there is a continual crash of falling ice ; and, for the half-day 
we spent beside this glacier, there was a roar as of artillery every few minutes, 
when tons of ice would go thundering down into the water. After the prosaic 
matter of lunch had been settled, and we had watched the practical-minded 
steward order his men down on the iceberg to cut off a week's supply with their 
axes, we embarked in the life-boats, and landed in a ravine beside the glacier. 
* * * We wandered at will over the seamed and ragged surface, 
the ice cracked under our feet with a pleasant mid-winter sound, and the wind 
blew keenly from over those hundreds of miles of glacier fields; but there were 
the gurgle and hollow roar of the water heard in every deep crevasse, and 
trickling streams spread a silver network in the sunshine. Reluctantly we 
obeyed the steamer's whistle, and started back to the boats. 

" A magnificent sunset flooded the sky that night, and filled every icy ravine 
with rose and orange lights. At the last view of the glacier, as we steamed 
away from it, the whole brow was glorified and transfigured with the fires of 
sunset ; the blue and silvery pinnacles, the white and shining front floating 
dreamlike on a roseate and amber sea, and the range and circle of dull violet 
mountains lighting their glowing summits into a sky flecked with crimson and 
gold." 

Since the above was written, in July, 1883, Glacier Bay has been one of the 
constant visiting points of the excursion steamer, and the experience of two or 
three years has shown the company how to exhibit this great panorama of 
nature to its patrons to the best advantage, and one will now be astonished at 



88 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

the ease with which the whole field may be surveyed in this the most wonderful 
bay on a line of steamboat travel. 

Our same correspondent speaks of an unknown passage down which they 
traveled in a way that will delight the heart of a Nimrod ; but he should have 
added that almost half the inland passage is of that character so far as the 
general world is wiser concerning it, and half of this, again, may be wholly 
unknown, offering one of the finest fields for short explorations without any of 
the dangers and difficulties which so often beset greater undertakings, and rob 
them of all pleasure while they are being prosecuted, and only compensating 
the explorer in the results attained. Here is what he has to say : 

" For the twenty miles that we had come down the beautiful inlet, the coast 
survey charts showed an unbroken stretch of dry land. To the sportsman 
that unknown inlet is the dreamed-of paradise. When we went out in the 
small boats, salmon and flounders could be seen darting in schools through the 
water ; and, as we approached the mouth of a creek, the freshening current was 
alive with the fish. The stewards who went to the shore with the tank-boats 
for fresh water, startled seven deer as they pushed their way to the foot of a 
cascade, and the young men caught thirteen great salmon with their own inex- 
perienced spearing. The captain of the ship took his rifle, and was rowed away 
to shallow waters, where he shot a salmon, waded in, and threw it ashore. 
While wandering along after some huge bear tracks, he saw an eagle at work 
on his salmon, and another fine shot laid the bird of freedom low. When the 
captain returned to the ship he threw the eagle and salmon on deck, and, at the 
size of the former, every one marveled. The outspread wings measured the 
traditional six feet from tip to tip, and the beak, the claws, and the huge, stiff 
feathers were rapidly seized upon as trophies and souvenirs of the day. A 
broad double rainbow arched over us as we left the lovely niche between the 
mountains, and then we swept back to Icy Straits, and started out to the open 
ocean." 

But we will not confine ourselves to the description of one person in consid- 
ering this the most fascinating and curious scene presented to the Alaskan 
tourists. Grand, even to the extent of being almost appalling, as are the 
Alaskan fjords, they are but the Yosemite or Colorado Parks, with navigable 
valleys, as they would appear greatly enlarged ; much as we are awe- 
struck at the feet of Mount St. Elias, it is but Tacoma or Shasta in grander 
proportions, and so on through the list of scenes we view : but in the glaciers 
we have no counterpart that can be viewed from a steamer's deck, unless the 
polar zones themselves be invaded ; and here, in fact, we view the grandest 
sight to be seen in that dreary zone, without any of its many dangers. Says Pro- 
fessor Denman, of San Francisco, who has devoted much of his attention to 
glaciers, and especially these of Alaska, compared with which he pro- 
nounces those to be seen in Switzerland and other parts of Europe to be 
"babies :" 

" Muir Glacier is a spectacle whose grandeur can not be described, — a vast 








SCENES AMONG THE ALASKAN GLACIERS. (From Photographs.) 

No. 1 (Top'. A Near View of the Terminal Front of the Muir Glacier. No. 2. Looking Seaward from the Surface of 

the Glacier. No 3. The Excursion Steamer at the Front of the Glacier. No. 4 (Bottom). On the 

Great Frozen Sea; a Near View of the Surface of the Glacier. 



(89) 



90 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

frozen river of ice, ever slowly moving to the sea, and piling the enormous 
masses higher between the mountain banks, until their summit towers hundreds 
of feet in the air. Where the point of the glacier pushes out into and overhangs 
the water, vast fragments breaking apart every few moments of their own 
weight, and falling with a thundering crash into the sea, to float away as enor- 
mous icebergs, it affords a spectacle which can only be understood and appre- 
ciated by one who beholds it with his own eyes. From the summit of Muir 
Glacier no less than twenty-nine others are to be seen in various directions, all 
grinding and crowding their huge masses toward the sea, a sight which must 
certainly be one which few other scenes can equal." 

Says a writer, Mr. Edward Roberts, in the Overland Monthly : "I do not 
know how wide, nor how long, nor how deep Glacier Bay is. One does not 
think of figures and facts when sailing over its waters and enjoying the novel 
features. Flood Switzerland, and sail up some of its canons toward Mont 
Blanc, and you will have there another Glacier Bay. But until the sea-waves 
wash the feet of that Swiss peak, and until one can sail past the glaciers of that 
country, there will never be found a companion bay to this of Alaska. Norway, 
with all its ruggedness, has nothing to equal it ; and there is not a mountain in 
all the ranges of the Rockies which has the majestic gracefulness of Fairweather 
Peak, which looks down upon the bay. 

" Imagine the view we had as we turned out of Lynn Canal and moved into 
the ice-strewn waters of the strange place. Above hung the sun, warm and 
clear, and lighting up the wide waste of waters till they glistened like flashing 
brilliants. Away to the left and right ran sombre forests, and long stretches of 
yellow-colored stone, and rocky cliffs that now ran out into the bay, and, again, 
rose high and straight from out it. No villages were in sight; no canoes 
dotted the waters; but all was desolate, neglected, still; and cakes of ice, white 
in the distance and highly colored nearer to, floated about our ship. And 
there, in the northwest, rising so high above the intervening hills that all its 
pinnacles, all its gorges, and its deep ravines of moving ice were visible, was 
Fairweather, loftiest, whitest, most delicately moulded peak of all the snowy 
crests in this north land. From a central spur, topping all its fellows, lesser 
heights helped form a range which stretched for miles across the country, and 
on whose massive shoulders lay a mantle of such pure whiteness that the sky 
above was bluer still by contrast, and the forests grew doubly dark and drear. 
All through the afternoon we sailed toward the glorious beacon, while the air 
grew colder every hour, and the ice cakes, hundreds of tons in weight, grew 
more numerous as the daylight began to wane. The glaciers of Glacier Bay 
are the largest in Alaska. Formed among the highest crags of the Fairweather 
range, they gradually deepen and widen as they near the sea, and end, at last, 
in massiye cliffs of solid ice, often measuring three hundred feet high, and 
having a width of several miles. The surface of the glaciers is rough and 
billowy, resembling the waves of a troubled sea frozen into solid blocks of ice 
at the moment of their wildest gambols. Constantly pressed forward by the 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 91 

heavy blocks that gradually slide down the mountain ravines, the great frozen 
river keeps pressing seaward, until the action of the waves crumbles away 
gigantic cakes, that fall into the waters with a noise like the booming of cannon, 
and with a force that sends columns of water high into the air. The scene was 
one of arctic splendor, — white, ghostly and cheerless ; while the light was that so 
often described by visitors to the polar sea, — uncertain, bluish, and strongly resem- 
bling a November twilight in New England, when the sky is overcast, the trees 
are bare, and the clouds are full of snow. Gaining at last a point barely three 
hundred yards from the glacier, the ship was stopped short. Before us rose 
the towers and solid walls, forming an embankment higher than our mast-head, 
and towering upward in dense masses against the leaden sky. Taken to 
Switzerland, the glacier of Alaska would cover that country three times over ; 
for the frozen rivers of our largest purchase are not only fifty miles in length 
and three in width, but often twice that distance long and ten times that 
distance wide." 

Lieutenant Wood, whom we have quoted before, in speaking of the T'linkit 
Indians in the ice, says: " I noticed that, when journeying through the floating 
ice in good weather, our Indians would carefully avoid striking pieces of ice, 
lest they should offend the Ice Spirit. But, when the Ice Spirit beset us with 
peril, they did not hesitate to retaliate by banging his subjects. After picking 
our way through the ice for three days, we came upon a small, temporary camp 
of Hoonahs, who were seal hunting. We found little camps of a family or two 
scattered along both shores. One of the largest glaciers from Fairweather 
comes into the bay, and thus keeps its waters filled with the largest icebergs, 
even in the summer season, for which reason the bay is a favorite place for seal 
hunting. The seal is the native's meat, drink (the oil is like melted butter) 
and clothing. I went seal hunting to learn the art, which requires care and 
patience. The hunter, whether on an ice floe or in a canoe, never moves when 
the seal is aroused. When the animal is asleep, or has dived, the hunter darts 
forward. The spear has a barbed, detachable head, fastened to the shaft by a 
plaited line made from sinew. The line has attached to it a marking buoy, 
which is merely an inflated seal's bladder. The young seals are the victims of 
the T'linkit boys, who kill them with bow and arrow. These seal hunters used 
a little moss and seal oil and some driftwood for fuel. * * * After 
about forty miles' travel, we came to a small village of Asonques. They 
received us with great hospitality, and, as our canoe had been too small to carry 
any shelter, the head man gave me a bed in his own cabin. He had a great 
many wives, who busied themselves makmg me comfortable. The buckskin 
re-enforcement of my riding trousers excited childish wonder. I drew pictures 
of horses and men separate, and then of men mounted on horses. Their 
astonishment over the wonderful animal was greater than their delight at 
comprehending the utility of the trousers. The Alaskan women are childish 
and pleasant, yet quick-witted, and capable of heartless vindictiveness. Their 
authority in all matters is unquestioned. No bargain is made, no expedition 



92 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

set on foot, without first consulting the women. Their veto is never disre- 
garded. I bought a silver-fox skin from Tsatate; but his wife made him return 
the articles of trade and recover the skin. In the same way I was perpetually- 
being annoyed by having to undo bargains because his wife said ' clck/i / that 
is, ' no.' I hired a fellow to take me about thirty miles in his canoe, when my 
own crew was tired. He agreed. I paid him the tobacco, and we were about 
to start, when his wife came to the beach and stopped him. He quietly 
unloaded the canoe and handed me back the tobacco. The whole people are 
curious in the matter of trade. I was never sure that I had done with a 
bargain; for they claimed and exercised the right to undo a contract at any 
time, provided they could return the consideration received. This is their 
code among themselves. For example: I met, at the mouth of the Chilkat, a 
native trader who had been to Fort Simpson, about six hundred miles away, 
and, failing to get as much as he gave in the interior of Alaska for the skins, 
was now returning to the interior to find the first vender, and revoke the whole 
transaction. 

" From the Asdnque village I went, with a party of mountain goat hunters, 
up into the Mount St. Elias Alps back of Mount Fairweather, — that is, to the 
northeast of that mountain. For this trip our party made elaborate prepara- 
tions. We donned belted shirts made of squirrel skins, fur head-dresses 
(generally conical), sealskin bootees, fitting very closely, and laced half way. to 
the knee. We carried spears for alpenstocks, bows and arrows, raw-hide 
ropes, and one or two old Hudson Bay rifles. Ptarmigan were seen on the 
lower levels where the ground was bare. The goats kept well up toward the 
summit, amid the snow fields, and fed on the grass which sprouted along the 
edges of melting drifts. The animal is like a large, white goat, with long, 
coarse hair and a heavy coat of silky underfleece. We found a bear that, so 
far as I know, is peculiar to this country. It is of a beautiful bluish under-color, 
with the tips of the long hairs silvery white. The traders call it ' St. Elias 
silver bear.' The skins are not uncommon." This little mountain trip of 
Lieutenant Wood's is especially spread before the attention of those who find in 
this form of exercise their best recreation from their regular duties. 

But, however much the tourists may want to dwell amidst the curious and 
marvelous scenes of Glacier Bay (and so great has been this demand that it is 
contemplated building a summer resort near by, that passengers may remain 
over one steamer), yet a time must come when we will have to bid good-bye to 
this polar part of our wonderland, and pass on to the next grand panorama in 
view. Southeastward out of Glacier Bay into Icy Straits, and we turn south- 
westward into Cross Sound, headed for the Pacific Ocean, and for the first time 
enter its limitless waters. Cross Sound was named by Vancouver, in 1778, in 
honor of the day on which it was discovered, and is about fifty-five miles long. 
It corresponds on the north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the south, these 
two waterways being the limiting channels north and south of the inland 
passage as it connects with the Pacific Ocean. As the Puget Sound projects 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 93 

much farther to the south from Fuca Strait into the mainland, hemmed in by 
snowy peaks, so Lynn Canal, "the Puget Sound of the North," continues the 
Sound of the Holy Cross far to the northward, embayed by glaciers, icebergs, 
and fields of snow. 

Recently, a trip out of Cross Sound, and northwestward about two hundred 
miles along the Pacific coast, has been occasionally added to the scenes of the 
inland passage, the new views presented being the Mount St. Elias Alps, directly 
facing the Pacific, for the distance noted, and containing within those limits the 
greatest number of high and imposing peaks to be found in any range in the 
world. The inland passage (by the use of Peril Straits to Sitka) became so per- 
fect a river-like journey, absolutely free from sea-sickness, that no one felt like 
breaking this delightful trip by a sea journey, in any of its parts, however 
tempting the display might be. A trip or two, however, soon convinced the 
company that the mildness of the sea during the excursion season would war- 
rant them in taking it as a part of the journey ; and since, as I have said, it is 
taken occasionally, I think a short description of it would be appropriate here. 
Should the hotel in Glacier Bay, or near vicinity, be completed soon, it would 
be a good stopping-point for those who are sure to feel sea-sick with the least 
motion of the waves ; while, to all others, the chances for good weather on the 
Fairweather Grounds, as they are not inappropriately termed, are very good, 
and, conjoined with the grand mountain scenery, should not be missed. 
Rounding Cape Spencer {Pimta de Villalueiiga of old Spanish charts), the 
northern point of the Pacific entrance to Cross Sound, the journey out to sea is 
commenced ; a view about ten to fifteen miles off shore being the best, or on 
what is known to the fishermen who here used to pursue the right whale, " the 
Fairweather Grounds," being so named, it is said, from Fairweather peak being 
in sight of most of it ; and this, again, was named by the indomitable Cook, in 
1778, as a monument to the fair weather he had cruising in sight of the grand 
old chain, a name which most tourists may congratulate themselves is well 
bestowed. 

Almost as soon as Cape Spencer is doubled, the southern spurs of the Mount 
St. Elias Alps burst into view, Crillon and Fairweather being prominent, and 
the latter easily recognized from our acquaintance with it from the waters of 
Glacier Bay. A trip of an hour or two takes us along a comparatively uninter- 
esting coast, as viewed from " square off our starboard beam ; " but all this time 
the mind is fixed by the grand Alpine views we have ahead of us, that are slowly 
developing in plainer outline here and there as we speed toward them. Soon we 
are abreast of Icy Point : while, just beyond it, comes down a glacier to the ocean 
that gives about three miles of solid sea-wall of ice, while its source is lost in the 
heights covering the bases of the snowy peaks just behind. The high peak t- 
the right, as we'steamby the glacier front, is Mount La Perouse, named for one of 
the most daring of France's long list of explorers, and who lost his life in the 
interest of geographical science. His eyes rested on this range of Alpine peaks 
in 1786, ]ust a century ago. Its highest point reaches well above 10,000 feet, 



94 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

and its sides are furrowed with glaciers, one of whicli is the ice-wall before our 
eyes, and which is generally known as the La Perouse Glacier. The highest peak 
of all, and on the left of this noble range, is Mount Crillon, named by La Perouse, 
in 1786, after the French Minister of the Marine ; while between Crillon and La 
Perouse is Mount D'Agelet, the astronomer of that celebrated expedition. Crillon 
cleaves the air for 16,000 feet above the sea on which we rest, and can be seen for 
over a hundred miles to sea. It, too, is surrounded with glaciers, in all directions 
from its crown. Crillon and La Perouse are about seven miles apart, nearly north 
and south of each other. About fifteen miles northwest from Crillon is Lituya 
Peak, 10,000 feet high ; and the little bay opening that we pass, between the two, is 
the entrance to Litu3'a Bay, a sheet of water which La Perouse has pronounced 
as one of the most extraordinary in the world for grand scenery, with its glaciers 
and Alpine shores. Our steamer will not enter, however; for the passage is dan- 
gerous to even small boats, — one island bearing a monument to the officers and 
men of La Perouse's expedition, lost in the tidal wave which sweeps through 
the contracted passage like a breaker over a treacherous bar. Some ten or 
twelve miles northwest from I>ituya Peak is Mount Fairweather, which 
bears abreast us after a little over an hour's run from Lituya Bay. It was 
named by Cook in 1778, and is generally considered to be a few hundred feet 
shorter than Mount Crillon. It is in every way, by its peculiar isolation from 
near ridges almost as high as itself, a much grander peak than Crillon, whose 
surroundings are not so good for a fine Alpine display. Fairweather, too, 
has its frozen rivers flowing down its sides; but none of them reach the sea, for 
a low, wooded country, some three or four miles in width, lies like a glacis 
at the seaward side of the St. Elias Alps, for a short distance along this 
part of the coast. The sombre, deep green forests add an impressive feature 
to the scene, however, lying between the dancing waves below and the white 
and blue glacier ice above. Rounding Cape Fairweather, the coast trends 
northward; and, as our bowsprit is pointed in the same direction, directly 
before us are seen immense glaciers reaching to the sea. From Cape Fair- 
weather (abreast of Mount Fairweather) to Yakutat Bay (abreast of Mount 
Vancouver), no conspicuous peak rears its head above the grand mountain 
chain which for nearly a hundred miles lies between these two Alpine bas- 
tions; but nevertheless every hour reveals a new mountain of 5,000 to 8,000 feet 
in hei^flfr, which, if placed anywhere else, would be held up wnth national or 
State pride as a grand acquisition. Here they are only dwarfed by grander 
peaks. The glacier which we are approaching from Cape Fairweather was 
named, by La Perouse, La Grande Plateau. It is a very low lying glacier, its 
grade as it fades away inland being very slight, more like a frozen river 
than the precipitous masses of ice which we h^ive been used to seeing. Lit- 
tle is.»}cnown of it, beyond the seaward aspect; but it is proljably the larg- 
est glacier in Alaska, and the largest in the world, south of the polar regions 
themselves. 

Wherever these glaciers reach the sea, or connect with it by draining 



THROUGH WONDERLAND. 95 

rivers, — and all large glaciers, at least, do this, — there is seen a milky sedi- 
ment floating in the water, which these "mills of the gods" grind from the 
mountain flanks in their slow but rasping course down their sides. Wher- 
ever they find calcareous strata to abrade, the water is almost milklike in 
hue for miles around. The glacier of the Grand Plateau is the last one facing 
the Pacific itself, as we move northward; but, where little bays cut back through 
the flat lands at the foot of the range, they may reach the glaciers which exist 
everywhere on the mountain sides. 

Off the Bay of Yakutat, — a name given it by the resident T'linkit tribes, — 
we have our best view of imperial St. Elias, the crowning peak of this 
noble range, and the highest mountain in all North America, — nearly 20,000 feet 
above the sea-level, and all of this vast height seemingly springing from the 
very sea itself. No good picture has ever been given of it, and no words have 
ever fully described it. All of the superlatives of our language have clothed so 
many lesser peaks that they fall flat and mentally tasteless m the presence of 
this Alpine Titan, rearing his crest among the clouds as if defying description. 
This want of words has been felt by so many who have visited the grand scen- 
ery of Alaska, who saw that, in illustrating a fjord here or a glacier there, they 
have but duplicated the word-painting of some other writer describing a puny 
antagonist, compared with their subject, that I will give it in the words of one 
who expresses the idea more closely than I. It is from the pen of a correspond- 
ent in the Kansas City Journal, under date of September 14, 1885. 

" The difficult thing for the tourist to do in regard to Alaska is to describe 
what is seen for the general reader. Everything is on such an immense and 
massive scale that words are diminutives for expression, rather than— as travelers 
have been credited with using them — for exaggerated descriptions. For 
example, people cross the continent to sail for an hour or two among the 
Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, and word-painting has been exhausted 
in exaltation of their beauties. But here is a thousand miles of islands, ranging 
in size from an acre to the proportions of a State, covered with evergreen forests 
of tropical luxuriance, yet so arctic in their character as to be new to the eye, 
and in regard to which botanical nomenclature but confuses and dissatisfies. 
And in all this vast extent of mountain scenery, with summits ranging from one 
thousand to fifteen thousand feet in height, there is not enough level land 
visible to aggregate one prairie county in Western Missouri or Kansas. Day 
after day there is a continuous and unbroken chain of mountain scenery. I 
can not better impress the character of the landscape, as seen from a vessel's 
deck, than to ask the reader to imagine the parks, valleys, canons, gorges and 
depressions of the Rocky Mountains to be filled with water to the base of the 
snowy range, and then take a sail through them from Santa Fe to the northern 
line of Montana. Just about what could be seen on such an imaginary voyage 
is actually passed through in the sail now completed by our party of enthusi- 
astic tourists for the past ten days. You may divide the scenery into parts by 
the days, and just as it was successively passed through, and any one of the 



96 THROUGH WONDERLAND. 

subdivisions will furnish more grand combination of mountain and sea than can 
be seen anywhere on the globe. It is this vast profusion of scenery, this daily 
and hourly unrolling of the panorama, that overwhelms and confuses the 
observer. It is too great to be separated into details, and everything is platted 
on such a gigantic scale that all former experiences are dwarfed, and the imag- 
ination rejects the adjectives that have heretofore served for other scenes : to 
employ them here is only to mislead." 

" As one gentleman, a veteran traveler, remarked to me, as we stood looking 
north at the entrance to Glacier Bay, with the St. Elias Alps in full view, 
and Mounts Crillon and Fairweather overtopping the snow-covered peaks of 
that remarkable range : 

" ' You can take just what we see here, and put it down on Switzerland, and 
it will hide all there is of mountain scenery in Europe.' And then he added : 
' I have been all over the world ; but you are now looking at a scene that has 
not its parallel elsewhere on the globe.' 

" I cite this incident, as it is more descriptive, and gives a better idea of con- 
trast than anything of my own could do, giving, as it does, to the reader, a 
conception of the vastness and immensity of the topographical aspect of the 
shores of the inland seas through whose labyrinthine passages we have for ten 
days past, and for ten days more to come will be lost to the outside world, 
where nature reigns undisturbed and unfretted by the hand of civilization." 

Here, under the solemn influence of Mount St. Elias, and in the northern- 
most waters of the greatest ocean of our planet, we turn southward to repeat 
in inverse order the things we have seen ; or perchance, as often happens, down 
a number of new channels, with their varied scenery, before home is reached 
again. 

I have given a certain order in which the few ports of Alaska are visited ; 
but the reader must not for a moment think that this is always rigidly followed. 
Sometimes some of them are left for the return journey, and much depends on 
the amount of freight, and the number and character of passengers. In the 
winter the trips are made wholly with reference to mails, freight, and the few 
passengers ; but in the spring, summer, and fall these are wholly subordinate, 
and the trips are converted into excursions in the broadest sense of the word. 
While thousands of little channels remain almost wholly unexplored, which 
probably would make the fortune of excursion companies if transported else- 
where, yet it is evident that the greater attractions of the great inland passage 
have been discovered, and are now shown to the tourists to the Wonderland of 
the World. 

Fred'k Schwatka. 





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